Vollebak's Wave-Blocking Bomber Jacket Uses Technology From NASA Rover

Summary

• Vollebak has launched its Electromagnetic Shielding Bomber Jacket, a high-tech garment utilizing a NASA-developed material embedded with pure silver to block frequencies from WiFi and Bluetooth.

If one thing is certain, it’s that Vollebak does not play about innovation. This week, Vollebak emerged with a new space-inspired creation, unveiling the all-new Electromagnetic Shielding Bomber Jacket.

From its Full Metal Jacket Copper Edition, which uses 11km of copper wire, to its Martian Aerogel Jacket, which incorporates spacecraft scraps, the London-based design studio has placed a pointed emphasis on adopting industrial technologies to craft high-tech garments.

This time, the brand has borrowed a material developed by NASA, originally made for an electromagnetic shielding tent aimed at completely blocking external radiation from microwaves and radio waves. The material innovation facilitated the testing of the Mars-bound Curiosity Rover, which eventually touched down on the arid planet in 2012.

Embedded with pure silver in Germany by Shieldex®, the outer shell is composed of 82% polyamide with 18% silver plating blocks frequencies ranging from 0.2GHz to 14GHz — protecting the wearer from WiFi, Bluetooth, Ku-band satellites, and radar systems. The addition of the phone shielding pocket allows the piece to operate like a Faraday cage, preventing remote access to personal devices, on or off.

The brand emphasizes that rather than being applied in a coating, the silver is ‘grown into the fabric,’ making up roughly 20% of the material’s composition. Due to silver’s conductive and antimicrobial properties, the jacket allegedly deflects certain electromagnetic energy whilst killing bacteria at the same time.

Very much in line with menswear’s ongoing affinity for military silhouettes and technical fabrics, the design is based on the original MA-1 flight jacket. The khaki cuffs, ripstop construction, and classic bomber silhouette harken back to the Jet Age, which was defined by the advent of aviation and eventually outer-space exploration.

See the gallery above for a closer look at the Electromagnetic Shielding Jacket and join the waitlist for the product now at Vollebak’s official web store.