Reflections of the joy of roughness. 

My route into Vollebak was looking for security in a time of change and uncertainty. In the face of complexity and challenges I read an article about the 100 year hoodie, and its intention - to protect you from weather, fire, abrasion and time - really called to me. 

I’m not always comfortable with that. Whilst I’d like to think I’m Tyler Durden I sometimes find myself more aligned to the Narrator: just one more piece and my life will be fixed…

But I have found, as I grow older, that sometimes the joy of life is the roughness of it. 

"Did you know that the first Matrix was designed to be a perfect human world? Where none suffered, where everyone would be happy. It was a disaster. No one would accept the program.”

I suspect, in a world of AI, that we will come to appreciate the roughness of people’s writing and thoughts. I think we will come to dislike the polish of LLM’s creative endeavours. I see and feel this rejection brewing now. 

I believe this is true of clothing too. We are gathered here - for the most part - because we admire the philosophy of Vollebak. It’s very easy to walk into a department store and buy cheap, quickly made garments (and look, some people have no choice - I am not knocking that at all) but they are inherently soulless. 

Don’t get me wrong, some of Vollebak’s approach to logistics can be a flipping nightmare. I myself have waited ages for kit and know people on here who are still waiting for gear from the sales now. But there is something genuinely charming about Vollebak’s approach to sizing (all over the place) and the semi-chaos of their approach sometimes. A small team of dedicated people trying to make outrageous things. It’s the antithesis and antidote of a seemingly increasingly superficial world. An attention to detail in a culture full of reels. 

And, on a personal note, last night I had to put my dog, Pops, to sleep. She was 15. She was chaotic and food obsessed and I will miss her deeply. The joy of the roughness - and my heart is broken - is that this is what it feels like to love something in a world that isn’t perfect. I guess, in the end, none of us can really be protected from the passage of time. 

So sleep now Pops. You did good. 

I don’t think I can add new photos, so I’ll have to do a new post:

Hi,

Thanks for reaching out!

It's awesome to hear you've come across our 2017 Mountain Jacket online and that it's sparked your interest.

This is definitely one of the oldest and rarest pieces of gear in the Vollebak archive, with only a handful ever being made.

To find out more about it, I spoke with Satish, our Head Designer, who luckily still had one tucked away in the back of our office and was able to share a little of its origin story.

He told me it was part of our Blood, Salt and Dirt collection back in 2017. The idea behind the collection was to help conceal the marks left by extreme environments - blood, sweat, and dirt - so the gear looked at home no matter what you put it through.

Here's the description printed on the wash tag:

"Blood, salt and dirt camo are designed for the hostile conditions on Earth, where nature will leave its mark on your mind, body and clothes. This Dirt Camo Jacket comes pre-camouflaged for the abuse you're going to put it through, making mud and dirt difficult to detect, and cleaning optional."

The jacket is constructed using a three-layer membrane with a ripstop nylon outer shell, making it both waterproof and extremely durable.

I hope that's useful. But if you have any other questions, just let me know.

P.S. I've also attached a few extra photos I managed to snag!

Cheers,
Arthur

****

Previous post:

Vollebak’s Lost Pieces #1 – The Mountain Camo Jacket

Rarity = ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Some Vollebak pieces seem to disappear almost completely.

This is one of them. I could only find one picture of it.

Released in 2017, the Mountain Camo Jacket is a piece I’d never come across until recently whilst researching something else. I can’t remember seeing one appear in an Archive Sale, and I haven’t seen one come up second-hand either. If anyone owns one, I’d genuinely love to hear how it’s held up. This seems like it was a serious piece of kit.

Designed as a hardcore snowboard shell, it was built from pre-washed 6.6 nylon ripstop with a seven-layer camouflage print. It featured fully taped seams, a 15,000 mm waterproof rating, oversized zip pulls designed to be used with gloves, a high and independent protective collar (to protect the face even with the hood down) a marine hood, storm flaps, a snow skirt and rubberised waterproof pockets. It sounds like it was built with one purpose in mind: surviving bad days in the mountains.

One thing I haven’t been able to find is what it originally sold for.

If anyone remembers the launch price, I’d be interested to know.

It’s an interesting reminder that Vollebak wasn’t always building clothing around space travel, graphene or AI. Sometimes they just built an uncompromising piece of mountain equipment and quietly moved on to the next bonkers idea.

Has anyone here ever actually seen one in person, or better still, own one?

update from Vollebak

*“*Hi

Thanks for reaching out!

It's awesome to hear you've come across our 2017 Mountain Jacket online and that it's sparked your interest.

This is definitely one of the oldest and rarest pieces of gear in the Vollebak archive, with only a handful ever being made.

To find out more about it, I spoke with Satish, our Head Designer, who luckily still had one tucked away in the back of our office and was able to share a little of its origin story.

He told me it was part of our Blood, Salt and Dirt collection back in 2017. The idea behind the collection was to help conceal the marks left by extreme environments - blood, sweat, and dirt - so the gear looked at home no matter what you put it through.

Here's the description printed on the wash tag:

"Blood, salt and dirt camo are designed for the hostile conditions on Earth, where nature will leave its mark on your mind, body and clothes. This Dirt Camo Jacket comes pre-camouflaged for the abuse you're going to put it through, making mud and dirt difficult to detect, and cleaning optional."

The jacket is constructed using a three-layer membrane with a ripstop nylon outer shell, making it both waterproof and extremely durable.

I hope that's useful. But if you have any other questions, just let me know.

P.S. I've also attached a few extra photos I managed to snag!

Cheers,
Arthur

Vollebak’s Lost Pieces #1 – The Mountain Camo Jacket

Rarity = ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Some Vollebak pieces seem to disappear almost completely.

This is one of them. I could only find one picture of it.

Released in 2017, the Mountain Camo Jacket is a piece I’d never come across until recently whilst researching something else. I can’t remember seeing one appear in an Archive Sale, and I haven’t seen one come up second-hand either. If anyone owns one, I’d genuinely love to hear how it’s held up. This seems like it was a serious piece of kit.

Designed as a hardcore snowboard shell, it was built from pre-washed 6.6 nylon ripstop with a seven-layer camouflage print. It featured fully taped seams, a 15,000 mm waterproof rating, oversized zip pulls designed to be used with gloves, a high and independent protective collar (to protect the face even with the hood down) a marine hood, storm flaps, a snow skirt and rubberised waterproof pockets. It sounds like it was built with one purpose in mind: surviving bad days in the mountains.

One thing I haven’t been able to find is what it originally sold for.

If anyone remembers the launch price, I’d be interested to know.

It’s an interesting reminder that Vollebak wasn’t always building clothing around space travel, graphene or AI. Sometimes they just built an uncompromising piece of mountain equipment and quietly moved on to the next bonkers idea.

Has anyone here ever actually seen one in person, or better still, own one?

What are your first impressions?

£595, fair?

………………………

How we built a shell from two of the strongest materials on Earth.

Every high-performance shell is built around a trade-off. You can have something light. Or stretchy. Or tough. If you're lucky, two at once. But pushing all three at the same time is the point where materials science gets complicated and most people give up.
We didn't. Instead of hunting for a single miracle material, we borrowed an idea from aerospace engineers and the people who design the world's fastest cars: composite thinking.

Rather than ask one fibre to do everything, we built the Carbon Fibre + Dyneema® Shell from two radically different high-performance fibres, woven together into something you don't normally find in clothing.

Dyneema® is an ultra-high molecular weight polyethylene and the single strongest fibre we know of. Weight for weight it's up to 15 times stronger than steel. Which is why it's used to make bulletproof vests, armour for tanks and the ropes that hold deep-water oil rigs in place in violent, icy seas.

We wove thousands of white strands of Dyneema® horizontally through our nylon base material.
Crossing it vertically is a black carbon fibre, normally used to reinforce components in missiles, jet engines and the world's fastest cars. Definitely not jackets.

Each strand is almost pure carbon, its atoms locked into crystals that line up along its length, the same basic structure as graphene, which is what makes it so strong for its size.

Then we had to make the whole thing stretch. Carbon fibre is usually baked with resin into something completely solid. It’s the glossy black weave you see on a supercar or a race bike. Build a jacket from that and it wouldn't bend, let alone move with you.

So we did something different. We engineered both fibres into tiny spirals and wrapped them around an elastane core, so they behave like high-tensile springs, expanding and compressing as the shell stretches.

Then we added a serious amount of elastane on top, more than a quarter of the finished shell.
The result is a shell that stretches in every direction at once, while standing up to the same abrasion tests as our toughest 100 Year gear.
Because the grid is woven from white Dyneema and black carbon fibre, up close the shell has a fine micro check, and from a distance it reads as a clean technical grey. The grid even rises slightly out of the surface, giving it a texture you can feel.
Everything else gets out of the way so the material can do the work. That includes invisible zipped pockets, raglan sleeves, hidden snap cuffs and an internal hem drawcord.
The Carbon Fibre + Dyneema® Shell weighs 500 grams. It's also water repellent, breathable and lined with air-jet-textured Cordura.
It's the strongest, lightest and stretchiest shell we've ever built.
 
 NICK AND STEVE TIDBALL - FOUNDERS
 
JOIN THE WAITING LIST
 

 

 

 

 

 

 


"How on earth does this not exist yet?" That's the first question Vollebak co-founder Nick Tidball asks before making anything. And it's why we are creating Sonic Jackets, Rock Bombers and Belt Buckles built from a metal developed for frozen moons. In our spring issue Newspaper, he talked about the Fourth Age of Clothing, time travel as a multi-millennia project, and why a 40ft Spaceshop is "exactly the kind of shit Vollebak should be doing."


How do you introduce yourself to someone you've never met?

I'm Nick. I utterly love life. I have two incredible children. And a fiancée who's my soulmate, and soon to be my wife. I believe that everything, even quarks, have consciousness, but in a way we can't possibly understand yet. And I run a clothing company called Vollebak that's creating the future of clothing.

What did you want to be when you grew up?

I knew I had a love of things that were designed differently from everything else. The careers days at our school were kind of crazy. What you were offered was perhaps 0.1% of what the world could really offer.

I chose to study architecture because I loved the scale of buildings. And what I perceived as the intellectual and creative rigour that went along with designing them. I remember seeing Richard Rogers' Lloyd's building at 17 and being utterly blown away. It was an inside-out building that literally said fuck you to all other buildings.

What is the 'Fourth Age of Clothing'?

This is a concept my brother developed in a white paper. Which I didn't fully understand! So I decided to do my own research. The super simple answer is this: the First Age was the skins and grasses the hunter-gatherers wore 100,000 years ago. The Second Age was the silks and cottons that were created a few thousand years ago. Then the Third Age is the lab age, when we created textiles such as nylon and polyester. And now we are moving into the Fourth Age, where material science and biology and technology are all starting to merge to create intelligent materials beyond anything we can currently manufacture or could even conceive as possible.

Science fiction can tend to the binary – utopian or dystopian. You seem to take a more neutral, dispassionate 'what will be, will be' line. Is that fair?

I think the future is wonderful because it doesn't yet exist. Possibility is therefore infinite. It's the possibilities that I find utterly amazing as a creative. It means the only limits are those shaped by your ability to create, by your language and your mind. I picture it this way, when I go to play the piano, the piano is there, the keys are made, the strings are there waiting to get hit. And what I play is entirely my choice. The universe and our planet are the piano.

You've said, 'We make clothes you know out of materials you don't'. That idea, that the future doesn't arrive in fancy dress, seems fundamental to the way you think about what Vollebak does?

The human is a certain shape. Most of us have two arms and two legs; and we walk around. We have a head, a couple of feet and a couple of hands. Most of us are between 5ft and 6.5ft tall. So if we take this as the architecture of the human, we start off with a brilliant set of confines. And whether it's a suit or armour or a plasma skin in 3026, the human form still needs to be covered in similar ways.

"I think the future is wonderful because it doesn't yet exist. Possibility is therefore infinite."

In terms of product development, coming up with ideas, what's the first question you ask?

My first question is usually, 'How on earth does this not exist yet?' Sonic Jacket is a great example of that. It seems so obvious in my head. Firing frequencies and sound through your body is a wild idea. I also have a fundamental belief and feeling that the greatest ideas already exist in some way. And I'm simply uncovering an existing idea, unfolding it, and then running with it. And then trying to find every single path it could go down. This is an idea shared by many creatives I've worked with. It's the execution that is always the challenge – and bringing your idea to life in its purest, smartest form. And doing that with a team of brilliant, like-minded people around you.

How do you decide whether an idea is 'impossible' versus 'hasn't been done yet'? What's your process for distinguishing between the two?

I don't consider anything impossible. The only limits are time or capital, brain power and computing power. Unless we are talking about time travel, which will be a multi-millennia project.

You've also said there are three key things that clothing will do or offer or deliver in the future: medicine, neuromodulation and bionic implants. Can you talk through how that is going to pan out?

Well in every case, it's going to be the same journey as any early technology, a rollercoaster ride of madness. There's a creation phase, then an adoption phase, then a popularization phase. The game will be to make those timelines as short as possible.

"I don't consider anything impossible."

How has feedback from customers influenced product development, if at all?

The tricky thing about feedback is that in the clothing cycle, you're working at least 18 months ahead of what any customer is seeing. So when you do get feedback, it's on an idea we're probably already improving, developing and adapting. I'm my own toughest critic too as I wear and test 100% of the gear. My favourite feedback is helicopter feedback where customers understand the playing field we are in and spot opportunities for us to move into.

We are blessed with having some of the smartest customers on the planet, in terms of the roles they occupy in a vast number of industries around the world. When we launched the Spaceshop in Copenhagen, a customer brought me a space material I'd never seen and said, 'You've not used this yet – you should try it!' That's feedback I love!

You've mentioned the universe being potentially driven by consciousness. How might clothing serve as an interface for consciousness?

I'd imagine clothing eventually – in a thousand years, say – will incorporate conscious plasma skins that adapt to our mental and physical state. And to the conditions we are surrounded by. But I'd imagine that, just like right now, where we still have hunter-gatherer tribes living in the Amazon and astronauts in space, there will be divides across the human species.

What are your plans for physical retail?

As an architect, I believe in a built form as the ultimate expression of a company. Over the coming years I'd like to see quite a few of our stores pop up around the world. But I think each time they arrive, these stores have to be exceptional in some way. Maybe they are moulded entirely out of molten metal, or they're designed entirely around a sonic landscape that makes you feel like you are hallucinating and having an orgasm simultaneously.

Architecture's job is to inspire and leave you in awe. My heroes, Le Corbusier, Bjarke Ingels, Richard Rogers and James Turrell, can literally take your breath away. So any retail we do needs to do this.

Your heroes include chefs, architects and rocket designers. When you're stuck on a problem, are you more likely to look at what Hermès is doing or what SpaceX is doing?

Typically I'll look at what's not right about the process. I'm very process driven. The way we work, the way we think, and the way we are attacking the problem is typically the thing you need to adjust. This methodology is king. I most typically look at the way the top restaurants will think. They come up with a dish. They experiment endlessly to perfect it and bring it to life. Then they serve it. Then they replicate it thousands of times, to perfection. If something isn't working, I'll look at this very simple system, and ask what stage are we in? And how might they twist this moment to create a solve.

"Maybe they're designed entirely around a sonic landscape that makes you feel like you are hallucinating and having an orgasm simultaneously!"

Does the launch of the Spaceshop mark a new start for Vollebak?

It marks the start of taking Vollebak around the globe. There are so many places I want our shop to go. What's fascinating about running Vollebak is that when you meet people face to face and they see what we are doing, the appetite for it is off the charts. The challenge is simply awareness. So taking a 40ft Spaceshop round the world to let people know 'hey we exist' makes me grin. It's exactly the kind of shit I believe we should be doing!

Anything else to announce or tease?

Fireproof pants. Blue metal clothes. The Sonic Jacket that fires frequencies from 4Hz to 20,000Hz through you. Humanoids that are Vollebak fans from the future. A bomber made of rock. A belt that uses the metal we are sending to Titan. Normal run of the mill stuff!

Biggest mistake?

If you don't make mistakes, you aren't going for it. The older I get, the more I drive at risks and challenges. That means mistakes are an inevitability, but they teach you everything.

The trick is the fails should be fast, and that knowledge is then assimilated into your future behaviours.

Biggest success?

Ten ultramarathons, two wonderful children, having found my soulmate, running a company my brother and I believe we were born to create. And being able to make honourable life decisions during my time on earth.

What's the best piece of advice you've received?

Life is a train wreck. You can walk through it crying and complaining. Or you can walk through it all smiling and laughing. The choice is yours.

What are you secretly passionate about?

For the last year I've been working on a visual timeline that stretches from the birth of the universe right through to the history of humanity. Drawing a 13-billion-year timeline is fun! And you learn a lot. It's essentially Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time combined with the timeline of Sapiens. As far as I can see no one else is working on this, so I am.

What's your favourite place you've visited and why?

The Lost Lindenberg hotel in Bali. It was where I proposed to my fiancée, Dani. It's in the middle of nowhere, and the nature is utterly alive. It only has eight rooms and should be the next place they set 'The White Lotus'. I found a shell on the beach that I used to propose to Dani. It fitted her finger perfectly. You know a place is good when nature gives you gifts like that.
 
 NICK COMPTON - VOLLEBAK HEAD OF WRITING
 
OUR BEST SELLERS
 

 

 

 


My Future Nylon Coat literally arrived about five minutes ago.

https://vollebak.com/products/future-nylon-coat

I know quite a few people have been umming and ahhing over this one, and with a little bit of time left in the Archive Sale I thought I’d do a very quick first impressions review. Hopefully it’ll help sway you one way or the other.

Just bear in mind I’ve owned it for all of… five minutes.

The first thing that struck me is how lightweight it is. It’s much lighter than the Laser Cut Trench Coat. This feels much more like a traditional mac that you’d happily wear through spring and autumn, whereas the Laser Trench feels like a bit of a weatherproof monster by comparison.

Styling-wise, I really like it. It is a bit wrinkled but it’s been sat in transit and in the stock room I guess.

One thing I noticed almost immediately is that the collar isn’t designed to be worn up. It just doesn’t want to stay there, which probably explains why every photo on the Vollebak website shows it folded down. I suspect that’s something they addressed on the Laser Trench with the additional collar fastening.

The zips remind me a lot of the Equator Jacket, which is no bad thing because I really like that piece. The hardware feels very similar, and so do the sleeve fasteners.

Like the Equator Jacket, the sleeves are on the long side. That’s something I always notice with certain Vollebak pieces because I have a slightly shorter reach than average. It isn’t a deal-breaker, but it’s something I’ll want to pay attention to over the next few days. If you’ve owned Vollebak before, you’ll probably already know whether that’s likely to be an issue for you.

The colour is excellent. It’s a really deep navy that almost looks black depending on the light. If looks very smart and will pair exceptionally with a suit - rather than the shorts I currently have on.

This one is made in Romania.

Again, there are some similarities to the Equator Jacket. You get underarm ventilation to improve breathability, two external hand pockets and a zipped internal chest pocket.

I’m always pleased to find internal pockets. Some Vollebak pieces are absolutely loaded with storage, and I’m definitely a fan of that.

Around the back there’s a single rear vent rather than the side splits you get on the Laser Trench. I actually prefer this arrangement. It keeps the shape of the coat better and gives it a cleaner silhouette.

The obvious question is whether this replaces the Laser Trench…My first impression is no.

I actually think they’re two very different coats designed for two very different jobs. I’ll need to spend more time wearing this before I’m completely sure, especially given my self-imposed “one in, one out” rule for outerwear, but at the moment I don’t see them competing with each other.

For reference, I ordered an XL, which I’d say is absolutely true to size. I wouldn’t size up, and I wouldn’t size down. I think Vollebak have got the fit spot on.

Overall, my first impression is really positive.

I’ve posted some quick photos. This is a bit rushed because I wanted to get something out while the Archive Sale is still running.

If you’re on the fence, I’d probably say it’s worth having a look, especially at the current Archive Sale price. Vollebak’s returns process has always been excellent in my experience, and their customer service has consistently looked after me.

That said, don’t get swept up in sale fever.

If you don’t need another coat, you don’t need another coat. Technical clothing is fun, but it’s never worth putting yourself into debt over. Make sure you can afford the things you’re buying.

That’s my little public service announcement for the day.



 The Archive closes in 48 hours. So it’s your last chance to buy a small piece of Vollebak history… *also available in XS, Medium, Large, XL and XXL.


70% of the Archive has now gone, which is both good and bad.
It’s good to know that great gear has gone to great homes.
It’s bad because the lower the amount of stock, the lower the chance of matching people to products.
So to give every last piece of gear the best possible chance of finding a great home, most now come with 70% off.
As before, we've sorted everything by size.
We’ve got XS and Small
 
Small and Medium
 
Medium and Large
 
Large and Extra Large
 
And Extra Large and XXL
 
 NICK AND STEVE TIDBALL - FOUNDERS
 
ENTER THE ARCHIVE
 

 


This might not be good news for everyone but does align with their previous approach…

*There are now deeper discounts available on the archive sale*

The future nylon coat at 60 per cent off? Wowsers!!!

The tech wool insulated jacket at 50 per cent off.

Some smaller sized sashiko jackets at half price.

Definitely worth having another look:

https://vollebak.com/collections/archive-2026

ULTRALIGHT T SHIRT. STEALTH GREY EDITION
An ultralight, ultrasoft t shirt with thousands of perforations and silver-based odour control, built for 5K or 5-day runs.

Sale price 
£57
Regular price 
£95
40% off

https://vollebak.com/products/ultralight-t-shirt-stealth-grey-edition

One shirt, engineered for every climate, environment and terrain on the surface of Earth.
 
The Ultralight Shirt is the one you pack when it's the only one you pack. It weighs just 295 grams. It stretches like sports gear, repels water, resists creasing and keeps you cool in heat and humidity.
If you want to pack more, just to be safe, that’s fine with us too.

It's engineered to handle whatever situation and environment you find yourself in. And it does it with minimal visible fuss.

The material is built by Schoeller, one of the most advanced material technologists on Earth. It has a core-spun construction – an elastane filament runs through the centre of every yarn, wrapped in a sheath of high-tenacity polyamide.

That core gives the Ultralight Shirt its extreme two-way stretch. The sheath gives it durability and abrasion resistance, with a surface that feels like a shirt rather than yoga pants.

It’s protected with ecorepel Bio, a plant-based finish that works like a waxy leaf. It wraps every fibre in a microscopic barrier so rain beads up and rolls straight off.

No PFCs, no Teflon chemistry. Just renewable raw materials doing what a leaf has been doing for 450 million years.

Creases are a no-show, thanks to the polyamide itself. Pull the shirt from the bottom of a bag that's been under a seat for 9 hours and it still looks sharp. No pre-trip packing rituals. And no on-the-road steaming or ironing.
Heat is handled three ways. A crepe-like surface sits slightly off your skin, creating tiny pockets of air that pull away heat and moisture. Clusters of 1.5mm laser-cut ventilation holes are hidden at the underarms. And a concealed zip-entry chest pocket, deep enough for a phone or passport, also has ventilation holes.

The shirt fastens with 7 invisible Riri snaps hidden behind a covered placket, leaving a clean, unbroken line down the front.

They make buttons look like defunct technology. They're faster. They’re far more reliable. They won't pop open, snag on a branch or slip through wet fingers.

The shirt is part of a system of ultralight, all-weather clothing designed to go anywhere you go.

One shirt for any situation.
 
 NICK AND STEVE TIDBALL - FOUNDERS
 
BUY THE ULTRALIGHT SHIRT
 


Kelp can grow 24 inches a day on nothing but sunlight and saltwater. That's faster than a triffid, but with a much lower chance of getting eaten. And we’ve used it to make the Underwater Kelp Cardigan.

In John Wyndham's classic The Day of the Triffids, much of the world has been blinded by a meteor shower. Eight-foot-tall walking plants – possibly bioengineered by the Soviet Union – sting and then slowly digest stumbling, unsighted humans.

Seaweed, a type of marine algae, is almost as weird and otherworldly. But it doesn't walk, and it doesn't eat people.
It might turn out to be one of the most useful organisms on the planet. Which is why we’ve used it to build the Underwater Kelp Cardigan.
What makes seaweed so exciting? Let’s start with how fast it grows. Kelp – the long, ribbon-like brown algae that forms forests on the seabed – can grow by up to 24 inches a day. That makes it one of the fastest-growing organisms on Earth. Faster than triffids. Considerably faster than bamboo.
And it does it on almost nothing. No soil. No freshwater. No fertiliser. No pesticides. Just seawater, sunlight, and dissolved nutrients. Farming on land needs fields, irrigation, and machinery. Cultivating seaweed just needs a rope and a stretch of coastline.
The forests it builds are among the most productive ecosystems anywhere. Underwater rainforests, dense with life, growing up through the water column rather than out across a field. More than 35 million tonnes are now produced globally each year. Most of it is farmed rather than torn from the wild.
What's inside is more interesting still. Seaweed's cell walls are packed with biopolymers – alginate, agar, carrageenan, cellulose – industrial building blocks that are already in everything from ice cream to pharmaceuticals. Extracted and refined, they can be reassembled into films, gels, coatings, and fibres.
These polymers can be spun into yarns that look, feel, and behave like natural fibres, but at a fraction of the environmental cost. They need up to 70 times less water than cotton. They cause zero microplastic pollution. And rather than lingering for centuries, some seaweed-based materials are designed to disappear, biodegrading in a matter of weeks.
Brown and red seaweeds can also – and with much less intervention and engineering – be turned into thin, transparent films that are strong enough for packaging. It’s also compostable. Instead of outliving everyone who ever touched them, they just quietly disappear.
Then there's everything seaweed does while it's still growing. It absorbs carbon dioxide straight out of the water. It acts as a living filter, pulling excess nutrients from coastal seas and quietly restoring balance.
It’s not all upside. Processing seaweed at scale is still energy intensive. But seaweed is more than a single miracle material. It’s the basis of a new material system, a blue biorefinery, where the entire plant gets used across food, feed, chemicals, and textiles with as little waste as possible.
For most of history, seaweed has been seen as an unsightly annoyance. We knew it was useful, just not for us. That's all about to change.
 
 NICK AND STEVE TIDBALL - FOUNDERS
 
BUY THE UNDERWATER KELP CARDIGAN

In May 2026 our Vollebak Spaceshop landed in London. And just like the first moon landing we have clear photographic evidence… and we even made sure our shadows made sense. We also have t shirts to commemorate the landing. So it must have happened. 


Last week we invited you to buy your own alien, courtesy of our artist friend Henrik Dehelag who had created 3 new species for the launch of our Vollebak Spaceshop.
 
While he uses paintbrushes rather than intergalactic DNA, his brief to himself was to “create something that just burns itself onto your retina.”
 
With the first 2 paintings sold and on their way to their new owners, now we have just one final alien looking for a friendly new Earth parent.
 
If of course you’d rather wear an alien on your skin rather than hang it on your wall, we now have that option too… and it’s probably much more enjoyable than them wearing you.
 
Our Alien T Shirts commemorate the first landing of our Vollebak Spaceshop – and if you missed the event you can buy them here.
 
 NICK AND STEVE TIDBALL - FOUNDERS
 
BUY YOUR ALIEN T SHIRT

Recently, I took my family on holiday where we drove across France, Belgium, and Holland, giving me the chance to field test my Equator Shorts and Equator Jacket in the conditions they were designed for… being a dad in slightly warmer weather (probably).

Day one: I drove to the Channel Tunnel with my wife and three daughters onboard. We arrived just in time to queue at the tunnel for seven hours whilst HM Government blamed the French - a tradition I believe that dates back to the 1600s. 
The shorts did a really good job of keeping me cool whilst I sat on the sun baked pavement wondering why I thought travelling on a bank holiday weekend was a good idea. 

Day two and three: we visited the fairytale town of Bruges in 32 degree sun. The decently sized pockets provided me with somewhere to put my hands whilst negotiating with my children to walk further than 300 meters between meltdowns; and for the considerable amount of time I stood outside a shop that sold interesting fridge magnets. The zips on my pockets kept my phone and wallet completely secure in the 3 or 4 minutes I wasn’t using them to pay for chocolate, waffles, or fridge magnets. 

I’d brought two pairs of the shorts and hand washed the first pair. They are a cotton / polyamide blend and dried really quickly in the air, an advantage whilst trying to travel lightly (we had to travel with an air-fryer in the boot, obviously).

Day three: my freshly washed shorts served me well for a trip to Belgian A and E after my eldest daughter got a splinter in her foot from the beach that then became infected. For my American friends, cover your eyes: the Belgians were apologetic to me because I had to pay £14 for some meds - that was the total bill (including splinter removal and ultrasound) and we were in and out in just over an hour or so (good job Belgium!)

Day Four, five, and six: spent in the Dutch theme park Efteling, where the shorts really came into their own. The girls were suddenly able to walk many miles exploring the magnificent park, and developed a love for splash rides and rollercoasters. It was really hot and the days ended with us playing in a park built in a man made lake (great idea Dutch people, why don’t we have these in England). The two-way stretch and air vents worked magically to keep me cool and comfortable. They dried much quicker than anything else I was wearing which meant we could keep going all day.  If you haven’t been to Efteling I’d really recommend it, a great place to spend a few days. 

The shorts have a double button feature to keep them securely in place, but the build quality is really high and I felt I could remove them quickly, should the need preset itself - a point I pondered on having chosen something called the “special meat snack” for my dinner. Luckily this aspect remained untested. 

I came away really impressed with the Equator Shorts. I’ve had them for a while but travelling and doing active days really showed what they were made for. 

My only reservation is that one of my pairs has developed an issue with the stitching at the rear, which has started to fail. I’ve attempted a repair, but I’m not convinced they’ll last forever in their current state, and I’ll be genuinely disappointed when they eventually wear out. To be fair, I bought them on the pre-owned market rather than directly from Vollebak, so I have no idea what their history was before they reached me. I don’t know whether it’s a quality-control issue or whether something happened to that particular pair before I bought them. 

My second pair has shown no signs of the same problem, which makes me think I may simply have been unlucky. And if I’d bought them through Vollebak I’m pretty confident they’d just replace them… oh well. 

I also had the opportunity to test my Equator Jacket during the trip. It’s another piece that I’ve grown fond of. It’s comfortable, easy to wear and, in my opinion, looks cool - though might be a little short on some people. It works well open, but I think it looks even better done up. As a lightweight jacket for warm evenings, it pairs brilliantly with shorts and looks equally good with trousers. Because of the heat I didn’t wear it loads, but I think it will definitely earn its place in autumn and spring. 

Overall, both pieces performed exactly as I’d hoped. The shorts, in particular, were outstanding in hot, humid conditions and have become some of my favourite travel gear.


If you’ve ever walked out of a film and decided that from now on you’re going to dress more like Jason Bourne, John Wick, Tyler Durden, or Indiana Jones, the good news is you’re not alone… also, we have a new jacket for you.

 
You’re not supposed to have favourite pieces of clothing when you run the company.
 
It’s a bit like having favourite children.
 
…but luckily clothes don’t have feelings. And they can’t read emails.
 
So I don’t feel bad about saying our Planet Earth Field Jacket is my favourite jacket, and I basically spend my whole life in it.
 
We originally designed it to look like you stole it off the back of Indiana Jones. That was the brief.
 
But while its backstory looks like it involves runaway boulders, bad guys in deserts, snake pits, and crazed cults, it actually starts in the mills of Northern Italy where we work with a team who specialise in creating complex colours in exceptional fabrics.
 
Each jacket is handmade using a custom garment-dyeing and stone-washing process that also relaxes and softens the material to make the jacket feel like you’ve already owned it for 20 years – and the more adventures you take it on, the more it will continue to mould to your body and develop its own unique fade patterns. 
 
Essentially the more you wear it and wash it the better it looks. So within a couple of months it will look and feel as if it’s already travelled to every corner of the planet and back.
 
My only issue I have with the jacket is until today it’s only ever come in one colour – which is a problem if you tend to wear something to death the minute you like it.
 
So today we’re launching the same jacket in Navy. Mainly for me. But we thought we’d make a few extra.
 
We finish the jacket with high-spec detailing. It’s built with 7 pockets – including a hidden zipped pocket for treasure maps, and 2 giant back pockets that can carry 3 litres or a couple of ancient relics. The seams are reinforced internally with herringbone tape. The jacket fastens down the centre with a heavy-duty metal zipper protected by a storm flap that closes with metal press studs. The cuffs tighten around your wrists with metal snaps. And when the weather turns hostile you can flip the collar up and fasten it for protection.
 
As always, if you need a hand with sizing you can get in touch with us here.
 
 NICK AND STEVE TIDBALL - FOUNDERS
 
BUY THE FIELD JACKET
 
  

If you’ve always fancied owning your own alien, now you can. We worked with artist Henrik Delehag to create 3 new species for the launch of the Vollebak Spaceshop. Luckily they’re designed to hang on your wall, rather than eat you.


The artist and illustrator Henrik Delehag thinks we are all stuck in a soul-sucking temporal loop.
 
And it’s mostly because last Wednesday has the same name as this Wednesday and next Wednesday. Ditto Thursday, Friday etc etc.
 
“We’re going around in these weekly circles that we group into four, a slightly bigger circle, and then in a group of 12, and then that goes round in a circle,” he says. “It doesn’t rhyme well with human progress. We just feel like we are doing the same thing over and over.”
 
This isn’t just idle grouching. Henrik really has it in for the Gregorian calendar. And he’s been developing an alternative – the modestly named ‘Delehag calendar.’
 
Each day gets a new, unique name, and its own hand-drawn icon or ‘god.’ And so far, he’s created names and icons for 1,000 days.
 
Henrik’s work challenges the assumptions and consensual systems that we’ve stopped thinking about. He wants to help us to make the everyday new and strange. And to think about what’s beyond the known… which is exactly why we wanted to work with him.
 
So we asked Henrik to imagine 3 aliens the Spaceshop might encounter on its first intergalactic delivery round. Or on Earth. Depending on what you think lives here.  
 
“I’m interested in investigating areas where science hasn’t really reached,” he says. “That’s what made me so excited about creating these four creatures that we've never seen before. No one can come and say that these aliens don’t exist because who knows.”
 
Henrik first task was researching older imaginings of extraterrestrial life.
 
He didn’t find much beyond little green men, the elongated bug-eyed ‘grey’ aliens and walking exposed nervous systems. This allowed him more creative space. But, he says, the project was still an imaginative leap.
 
“That was the hardest thing, finding four aliens that were so different they could represent four different parts of the universe,” he says. “They had to complement each other while being completely separate.”
 
Before he started, Henrik resisted giving the aliens any kind of origin or back story, chemical composition or even names. Though he has slowly filled in the blanks. The critical thing was that they exist as forms, as stark icons, not necessarily threatening or friendly, cute or monstrous, but very strange and hard to forget.
 
“My ambition is always to create something that just burns itself onto your retina,” he says.
 
Henrik says he loved science fiction as a kid. “It opened you up to imaginary worlds, filled your brain with new possibilities, things we should investigate,” he says.
 
“The thing that really excited me about the Spaceshop is the excitement of exploration,” he says. “For me, it belongs here on Earth as much as it does out in space. There’s so much undiscovered here on Earth. We should apply an astronaut’s curiosity and sense of wonder here. And Vollebak seems to be making things to make that possible.”
 
If you want to your very own alien, or all three aliens, you’ll find Henrik’s 3 original paintings in the link below. They come framed and mounted, and measure 110cm x 80cm. And they promise not to eat you.
 
 NICK AND STEVE TIDBALL - FOUNDERS
 
BUY YOUR OWN ALIEN
 









Vollebak News: a new colourway coming for the Sashiko Jacket in September.

Yesterday I was able to have a brief chat with Satish, Vollebak’s Design Director, and compliment him on the Sashiko Jacket he was wearing. Genuinely, he looked really sharp in it and clearly designed it for himself! 

However the version he was wearing was the new military green colourway, which he said was coming out in September. It really works and seems like a great trio of colours to choose from. 

Satish was really pleased with the response to the Sashiko Jacket, and I was able to pass on our enthusiasm and love for the piece. 

Might be worth starting to save your pennies! 

… oh, and I also met Tyler, one of the models (see wearing the full metal jacket). He was a really friendly guy, but he must be 6’7! No wonder the gear is always longer on me than I thought it would be. 

The picture above is him being squeezed into the sonic jacket. 

I spent the afternoon inside the Vollebak Space Shop talking with Steve, Felix and Izzy.

The space is amazing. Steve said they built the place in a single day. The atmosphere and aesthetic are genuinely distinctive and very Vollebak in person: raw and real. Photographs don’t do it justice.

The team are so friendly, as you might expect, and showed us around all the products without ever being pushy. Just passionate about their philosophy and proud of what they’ve achieved. Quite rightly.

They have lots of their gear laid out for a look in person.

If you’re thinking about going, get yourself there tomorrow. I think you’ll have a blast.