Emerging London-based designer IZZY DU is in a realm of her own. The Chinese-Canadian creative and Central Saint Martins graduate is renowned for crafting sculptural garments that mimic art, manipulating everyday materials into protective gear for dystopian city-dwellers. IZZY DU unveiled her most recent offering earlier this year, seeing her Fall/Winter 2023 “SUITE BERGAMASQUE” collection traverse supernatural worlds with ultra-modern attire grounded in utility.

For her next endeavor, Singaporean beverage brand Tiger Beer has tapped the designer for a first-of-its-kind jacket that keeps both the wearer’s body – and beverage – in mind. Speaking to Hypebeast, Du explains: “I began with the feeling of cracking open a cool beer on a hot summer’s day and that feeling of relief. I wanted to spread that sensation over the entire body.”

The outerwear piece is crafted in striking orange hues, featuring an exaggerated puffed design to be unveiled during Paris Fashion Week. IZZY DU’s eye-catching identity is evident throughout, boasting disfigured and ribbed indentations that mimic a realistic tiger pulled together by exposed tubbing. Both arm sleeves are fitted with zipped closures to hold your beer on the move, made to cool your body temperature in all weather conditions.

The jacket corresponds with its wearer for ultimate refreshment, bringing your body’s temperature down to a brisk 5° Celsius. Whether you want to take your Tiger Beer on an adventurous getaway or relax on toasty landscapes, the TIGER Summer Puffer is your ideal companion.

Ahead of IZZY DU’s Paris Fashion Week pop-up with Tiger Beer, the designer sits down with Hypebeast to discuss the innovative garment firsthand.

Hypebeast: How would you describe yourself as a designer?

IZZY DU: Spontaneous, detail-oriented, disconnected.

How do your designs play on sculptural figures and the body’s natural form?

The body is a living sculpture. Playing with the body’s natural form, building around it, and altering perception is what I do. I love combining the human form with the silhouettes of nature and landscape through shape, cut, and color; for people to look in the mirror and feel like they’ve come into their own, that is all I want.

How does being based in London inform your creative practice on the daily?

People here are crafty, down to get to it, and don’t mind taking an unconventional approach to creative practices; this resonates with me. Stimulating conversation and stirring ideas, London is the ideal place for that.

Walk me through your collaboration with Tiger Beer. How did this partnership come to be?

When I was first contacted about this collaboration with Tiger Beer, I thought, “What a funny, unnecessary, yet intriguing idea to make puffers for the tropical weather in which everyone is trying to wear less and keep cool.” There is something really beautiful in consolidating two worlds and two climates that don’t belong together. Making a puffer for the tropics is like playing with the art of obsolescence. Puffers are obviously built to keep warm in cold climates, so to make a puffer for warm climates is to combine the aesthetics of a puffer and imbue it with a new function, making it accessible to a different audience.

Talk me through the design process behind the Tiger Summer Puffer.

I began with the feeling of cracking open a cool beer on a hot summer’s day and that feeling of relief. I wanted to spread that sensation over the entire body. The TIGER Summer Puffer cools the wearer from the inside out through a system of tubes with water pumping through them, generated by a handheld battery in a hidden pocket of the jacket. The tubes are centrally connected to a bag containing Tiger Beer on the back of the jacket. Merging the technology seamlessly and symbiotically with the jacket was definitely a challenge. Also, I thought I’d be cheeky and make the jacket into a tiger with subtle ears, fangs, and stripes.

How does this collaboration continue to expand your design language in new ways that you haven’t explored before?

This is my first brand collaboration, and I couldn’t have asked for a better one. I’ve always experimented with juxtaposing traditional functions with idiosyncratic approaches. I will continue to explore the field of merging tech with fashion, which is historically considered utilitarian. There are a lot of boundaries untouched in the puffer game.

You will be hosting a Paris Fashion Week pop-up with Tiger Beer to celebrate the launch. What can we expect to experience here?

My work, at its core, is centered around the landscapes I’ve envisioned since I was a child, and this pop-up shop is my first attempt at fabricating that world into existence. The shop is an introduction to my first full wearable collection and a chance for people to take a piece of that home and make it part of them.

It is an opportunity for people to see and, more importantly, experience the cooling TIGER Summer Puffer for themselves. Together with my friend Thomas Bird, an amazing set designer, we merge Paris with the land of puffers, dirt, and metal. To be able to do it with Tiger Beer for the launch of our collaboration makes it all the better. And, of course, there will be Tiger Beers for everyone. Anyone coming is in for a treat, so come one, come all.

In what ways would you like to continue working with Tiger Beer in the future, and what can we expect from you next?

It’s been super fun collaborating with Tiger Beer, and their team has the best energy, so I would be more than happy to collaborate again in the future, whatever shape or form that may be. Right now, I am focused on building out IZZY DU as a brand with accessible and wearable garments that people can enjoy while sprinkling in my more conceptual work along the way.

You can experience the IZZY DU x Tiger Beer TIGER Summer Puffer at the designer’s Paris Fashion Week pop-up at 127 rue de Turenne.