FIDM Acquires Vollebak Jacket, Stone Island Anorak, and Sylven Apple Boot for the Innovative Materials Collection
Textile & Materials Manager Kristine Upesleja announces FIDM's most recent acquisitions for the Innovative Materials Collection: Vollebak's Full Metal Jacket made with copper, Stone Island's Anorak 434Q1 Raso Gommato Cover Colorado Bio, and Sylven's Almasi vegan boot made from apples.
Designed to help pioneer the future of intelligent and disease resistant clothing, Vollebak's Full Metal Jacket is built with over 6.5 miles of copper and is the winner of TIME Best Inventions 2020. Based in London, Vollebak says copper's ability to conduct heat and power while killing bacteria and viruses make it a potential first building block for the future of clothing. "Disease resistant clothing will become a requirement in the future, which is why we're starting to work with copper now. It's biostatic, so bacteria and other life forms can't grow on it. It also has exceptional antimicrobial properties which means bacteria and viruses die when they make contact with it."
This is the second Vollebak acquisition for FIDM, the first being The Black Squid Jacket, a ski and snowboard shell that contains more than 2 billion tiny glass spheres that scatter and reflect light when hit with a bright light such as a camera flash.
Headquartered in Milan, Italy, Stone Island created this anorak as a 40th Anniversary Special Edition and a replica of their archive garment 85434 Rosao Gommato Colored Cover from SS 1984. An iconic fabric of the Stone Island aesthetic, Raso Gommato has been created in numerous variations over the course of the past 40 years. The wind-resistant polyurethane film bonded to a cotton satin of military origin, is interpreted time after time to obtain targeted aspects through specific dyeing recipes on the finished garment. This 40th Anniversary special edition introduces Raso Gommato Cover Colorado Bio, made of 100% organic cotton coupled with polymers deriving from 52% biomass. The garment is dyed with the addition of a perfluorocarbon-free anti-drop agent.
Our third most recent acquisition, Sylven's Almasi vegan boot is handcrafted in Italy and made from organic food waste in Italy. New-York based Sylven was founded in 2017 by Casey Dworkin, a 15-year veteran of the footwear and accessories industry.
Industry professionals, professors, researchers, and students from as far away as Osaka and Amsterdam visit FIDM to see, feel, and be inspired by the Innovative Materials Collection, curated by Kristine Upesleja who has over 20 years’ experience in the fashion and design industry as a lecturer, educator, researcher, connector, curator, and visionary.
Many items are on display in the FIDM Library for students to examine up-close, including 3-D prints on textiles—"Beatle," "Crab," "Nebula," and "Urchin," and the iconic 3-D printed HY Clutch, all designed by award-winning Austrian Designer Julia Koerner who has a studio in Marina Del Rey.
Students can also examine textiles made from fish skin, orange fibers, pineapple leaf fiber (Piñatex®), mushrooms, recycled cassette tape, and bark cloth, which they use for inspiration as they pursue their own sustainable concepts.
