With most of the east coast suffering through record low temperatures, we were excited to find a jacket promising to keep us warmer longer! When the temperature is well below zero, only giant, bulky coats have a chance of keeping you warm. Unfortunately a large coat is less than ideal as you run around NYC or hit the slopes. Currently on Indiegogo, a new jacket from ThermalTech uses solar powered fabrics to keep you toasty, while shedding the bulk. Unlike Columbia’s (impressive but recalled) electric heating jacket, ThermalTech’s process of harnessing the sun’s energy is completely passive. A UV sensitive layer of the jacket captures and retains the light energy from the sun. This energy (unsurprisingly) is transferred to the fabric as heat. The name-sake ThermalTech layer then slowly releases the heat towards the inside of the jacket, raising the temperature by as much as 20º F versus a jacket without the special fabric. Even when the sun isn’t out, the lining of the outerwear works to keep you warm by absorbing and reflecting your body heat. According to ThermalTech, the jacket is also completely breathable to help keep you from over heating, a necessity if you are planning to hit the slopes with the coat! If all of this sounds perfect for the cold weather ahead, sadly the jacket is not shipping until you need it least – August. There are three different versions of the coat available, ranging from $139 to $169 and the crowdfunding campaign has already passed its goal.
Down and wool are among the best options to keep warm on a cold day, but they aren’t great. The colder the temperature, the thicker they have to be to keep you warm. A lot of synthetic materials have come along over the years promising to keep you warm and most of them have failed to live up to the hype. Either they breath as well as a plastic bag, they don’t come close to keeping you warm, or (worse) both. Recently some outerwear companies have begun to use a breathable, reflective material to line their coats. The technology is an improvement, but more could be done. The electric jackets, gloves, and boots from Columbia were a really interesting step but the technology and battery tech weren’t there yet. Hopefully ThermalTech’s material actually works; if it does, we will be curious is they try to become a brand or if their jacket is serving as a proof of concept for a licensing deal.
