One of Scotland’s oldest clothing manufacturers, Mackintosh, has joined forces with one of Italy’s best-known purveyors of technical sportswear, CP Company, on two pieces of outerwear.
Both are made in Scotland with Mackintosh’s most famous innovation, waterproofed cotton, with the inclusion of CP Company’s equally recognizable goggles in the hood.
The coats are handmade, with panels being sewn, attached and sealed in Mackintosh’s Scottish factory in North Lanarkshire, where seams are coated in water repellent to provide protection from both wind and rain. The two styles, the longer goggle car coat and waist-length goggle jacket, come with raglan sleeves, hidden fastenings, and adjustable cuffs.
To better understand this intriguing collaboration, we need to go back to both brand’s origins. In 1823, chemist Charles Macintosh bonded a rubber layer between two pieces of cotton to create the world’s first successfully patented waterproof fabric. The resulting coat, the Mackintosh – or Mac as it became universally known – was adopted across Britain and proceeded the invention of the trench coat by Thomas Burberry in 1879, and Aquascutum’s earlier iteration from around the middle of the 19th century.
It was used by the British Army in both World Wars as well as the police and other industries forced to endure the less-than-hospitable British weather. And although refined over the years, the basic premise of the Mac hasn’t changed a great deal since.
Massimo Osti came around 120 years later but has had a similarly out-sized impact on the fashion business. Equally fascinated by material innovation as Charles Macintosh, Osti founded two companies, Chester Perry (later renamed CP Company) and Stone Island. But it was with CP that Osti really made his name, popularizing garment dyeing (the process of dyeing clothes, not just fabrics, which gave a uniquely used, washed appearance) as well as the concept of coating yarn (linens and wools) in rubber to make it waterproof – in a sense evolving Macintosh’s original idea.
In 1988, CP Company sponsored the Mille Miglia, Italy’s infamous 1,000-mile car race which gave rise to the first iteration of the Mille Coat, with a pair of goggles embedded into the hood for use during dusty driving conditions. These became a signature of the brand, as instantly identifiable to streetwear aficionados as any three-stripe, swoosh or crocodile logo, and became an enviable element of British casual fashion and soccer terrace culture. Indeed, CP Company is now the official fashion partner of Manchester City, with the global reach that that confers.
Mackintosh is now owned by Japanese group Yagi Tsusho, which has steered the traditional coat maker into a more fashion-forward direction, with collaborations with Celine, Balenciaga, Vetements and, more recently, Carhart, Studio Nicholson, and Victoria Beckham.
Both coats come in fawn or black and will be available from February 26th at mackintosh.com and cpcompany.com, and in CP Company stores in Milan, London, Paris, Seoul, Tokyo, and Shanghai. The Mackintosh x CP Company Goggle Car Coat with removable hood costs £1,360 (approx. $1,853) Mackintosh x CP Company Goggle Jacket is £1,270 (approx. $1,731).
