It's So Hot That Brands Are Making Jackets With A/C Units
Summer sucks, straight up. It's the worst season by far, unless you live in Antarctica or on a beach. I can't stand the humidity or the heat, which makes it impossible not only to wear clothing, but to simply walk around outside.
I've tried it all: tank tops, shorts, sandals, sun-fighting caps. Nothing keeps me from overheating/
But what if there was a piece of clothing that actually cooled you down while you wore it? What if there was a jacket that allowed you to take your A/C unit out of your apartment and on the road?
For ¥47,300 (about $355), Nautica Japan's air-conditioned jacket will do just that.
Co-designed with indie label IS-NESS — best known in Japan for its very literal music genre-printed T-shirts and baggy pants — Nautica Japan's "athletic jacket" is designed to replicate old-school warm-up gear, the kind of stuff that you'd zip into for a couple games of ball or to hit the track.
Nautica Japan is overseen by star stylist Akio Hasegawa, who has a deep-rooted obsession with '90s sportswear, so everything it does is extremely retro.
Hence why this jacket sports vintage color-blocking and random panels of squiggly graphic design — it's supposed to look like a thrift store find.
But, if you take a peek inside, you'll get a glimpse of some very contemporary tech.
There's a set of fans embedded into the shell jacket, powered by a rechargeable battery that sits inside an internal pocket, which don't just blow air onto the wearer's body but actually recirculate air throughout the entire garment. It gets a bit puffy, but this is '90s style we're talking about here.
Available on FREAKS STORE's site, the Nautica Japan jacket is powered by a system devised by Kuchofuku, a company whose name literally translates to "air-conditioned clothes."
You can buy standard Kuchofuku garments online, if you want a regular ol' air-conditioned work jacket. These things are intended to keep delivery drivers and warehouse workers comfortable while they work through stuffy summer climes, so they'll keep you comfy with ease.
This isn't even the first A/C unit-infused layering piece I've ever seen: last year, fragment design and uniform experiment dropped a fan-cooled vest with Burtle, a company with a similar schtick.
But that was a little fancier and, with Hiroshi Fujiwara attached, much more hype. Nautica Japan, in comparison, is a brand for the proletariat. A/C jacket for all, until summer mercifully ends.
