“We would like to prepare humanity for the future to come.”
A bold and foreboding statement from Hidesign in Tokyo today. The uniform manufacturer, which two seasons ago began selling its fashion-meets-hardcore-workwear designs to the public, hopes to revolutionize our wardrobes by offering technologically advanced clothing that is suitable for a diversity of environments and conditions.
“Major changes in the global environment due to climate change are now imminent,” the company’s chief designer Hideo Yoshii said at a presentation for the brand. The event was held in the skyscraper offices of Sumitomo Chemical Co., who Hidesign collaborated with this season on a new temperature-regulating fabric. Named Temp Tune, it iss engineered at a molecular level to absorb heat in extreme heat, and release it in extreme cold.
This was among the key new details the brand introduced. A small puffer scarf with a button to heat it up! A flexible ‘heat sheet’ made of carbon nanotube film, worn over the shoulders that can change the wearer’s temperature! Jackets with fire injury prevention! It was like taking a trip to 2050. Each piece has an applicable function that promises to make life and work more convenient and comfortable in some way. “If the functions required for clothing are defined by the correlation between the various bodies and the various environments, then it is clear that the objects we must face are the body and the global environment,” explained Yoshii.
Hidesign’s proposition feels genuinely groundbreaking. This is not a fashion brand that exists to make cool-looking clothes (though its construction worker pants, super-cropped puffer jackets and compression wear in a muted palette of grayish blue is some of the appealing gorpcore out there right now), but one that offers genuine solutions to the dystopian problems facing humanity. When the climate collapse arrives at our doorsteps, we may well need these clothes to survive.