Vollebak creates Rock Jacket from 54,000 slate tiles

Experimental clothing brand Vollebak has made a one-off coat covered in over 50,000 half-centimetre-square pieces of slate.

Named Rock Jacket, the coat is the latest piece designed by Vollebak that aims to challenge traditional clothing material choices. It follows jackets made from graphene, copper, American walnut and Dyneema – a fibre that is 15 times stronger than steel.

"We have made clothing with wood, mycelium, and metal, rock felt like one of the next logical challenges to take on," Vollebak co-founder Nick Tidball told Dezeen.

Described by the brand as a "sci-fi-style Harrington jacket", the coat is entirely covered in five millimetre by five millimetre slate tiles.

In total, there are around 54,000 of these micro tiles on the jacket that are each half a millimetre thick and were attached to a neoprene base layer.

According to Tidball, slate is the most ambitious material the brand has made a jacket from, and the abundance of rock in the world means that it should be seriously considered as a material for clothing.

"At Vollebak we are aiming to create technological and material breakthroughs in clothing. Rock definitely represents a potential new material frontier," said Tidball.

"The first [reason to do this] would be, once you make a jacket out of rock everything else seems easy," he continued. "And the second would be, seeing as it's one of the most abundant materials on the planet, we should start looking to see if it's a viable material for clothing."

Made in collaboration with French material technologist Steven Leprizé, the Rock Jacket builds on processes developed for the brand's Wooden Jacket, which was made from 250,000 pieces of laser-cut American walnut.

The elastic marquetry technique, known as WooWood, that was used for the wooden jacket was adapted for slate with the latest creation.

Leprizé highlighted the precise laser cutting of the tiles into exact squares that allow the jacket to bend as the most important part of the jacket's production.

"There are 50 steps to making this material," said Leprizé, "and the cutting of the tiles is the most important."

According to the brand, the jacket aims to challenge the idea of throw-away clothing by utilising a material that "took millions of years to form" and also to "rethink our relationship with the oldest materials".

Vollebak now aims to develop the idea to create a commercially viable jacket that it hopes to release in two years.

"No one has really attempted to make a jacket from stone before, you experience serious creative and fabrication challenges at every turn," added Tidball.

"From sourcing the material, to constructing the material, to bonding the material, to constructing the jacket, there have been so many moments between the conception and the near completion of the Rock Jacket that looked like this project could have ended."

In architecture, stone is also being reconsidered as a modern material, with a high-rise block in London recently completed with a structural stone exoskeleton.

The photography is courtesy of Vollebak.

The post Vollebak creates Rock Jacket from 54,000 slate tiles appeared first on Dezeen.