Technical details Open Accordion
- Outer material made in Italy: 78% polyamide, 22% aramid fibre
- Synthetic insulation made in Italy: 50% recycled PET bottles, 50% polyester
- Lining made in Japan: 70% cotton, 30% nylon
- Outer material is water resistant to over 10,000mm
- Highly abrasion and tear resistant
- Zipped hidden chest pocket
- Two zipped side pockets
- Giant front pocket with snap button closure
- Two rear detachable pouch pockets with snap button closure
- Off-centre front zipper and two upper metal press studs
- Heavy duty belt tape on spine with Dyneema core and 6 hanging loops
- Vest weighs 1000 grams with back pockets
- Weighs 900 grams without back pockets
- Machine wash 30°C
Size + fit Open Accordion
Fit guide: The Off Grid Vest has a regular fit, but loose enough to leave room for warm layers underneath. If you’d like a closer fit, we recommend you go for the size down.
Model wears: Greg Kheel is 6ft 2 / 188cm with a 39 inch / 99cm chest. Greg has an athletic build and is wearing the Off Grid Vest in size Large.
Personalised advice: See our size guide for more advice on sizing, or you can ask us for personalised sizing advice here.
Returns and exchanges: Don’t worry if you order something and it doesn’t fit – we have a free, no hassle 30 day return and exchange period.
| XS | S | M | L | XL | XXL | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fits chest | 83-90 | 91-98 | 99-106 | 107-114 | 115-122 | 123-130 |
| Fits waist | 71-76 | 76-81 | 81-86 | 86-91 | 91-96 | 96-101 |
| XS | S | M | L | XL | XXL | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fits chest | 33-36 | 36-39 | 39-42 | 42-45 | 45-48 | 48-51 |
| Fits waist | 28-30 | 30-32 | 32-34 | 34-36 | 36-38 | 38-40 |
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The grid might not be the solution we thought
We’ve spent almost all our entire time on Earth living off the grid. It’s been just 140 years since Thomas Edison switched on his generators at Manhattan’s Pearl Street Station in 1882 and the first electrical grid was born. Your great-great grandparents might have remembered it. It was 3pm on a Monday. Gas, water, Amazon and Netflix all followed. But what if the grid is a blip? What if it’s an experiment we’ve outgrown? After all, we survived for two million years without it.
What is “off grid”
Living off grid in its purest form means that you’re responsible for everything. Take a raft to an uninhabited desert island and you’ll get the idea. Drinking water? That’s yours to find. Fire? You’ll need to light it. Shelter? You’ll need to build it. Clothes? You’ll need to make some. Food? You’ll have to catch it or forage for it. At this end of the spectrum it’s all about survival. But given there aren’t quite enough islands to go round, the shift to off grid is more likely to take the form of self-sufficient communities setting up in increasingly remote and inhospitable terrain producing their own food and energy.
Why the future will be lived off grid
With finite fossil fuels, a rapidly changing climate, and many predicting water wars in the not-too-distant future, being totally divorced from the production of everything we rely on for survival doesn’t feel like a particularly smart idea. Not knowing how to grow your own food, raise animals, find water, or even build the things you need, might become a serious stumbling block to survival if things don’t quite run to plan. While getting to Mars is definitely the next frontier, there might be another one waiting for you on your own doorstep.
The Off Grid range
As parts of our planet become increasingly difficult to live on, and we’re forced into new and unknown terrain, we’re going to need solutions to help us. So our Off Grid range is a system of clothing we’ve designed to help you live remotely. It doesn’t matter whether you’re going off grid for a weekend, a year, or you’re selling up and unplugging for good. We’re starting with seven pieces – a vest, 3 pairs of pants, 2 jackets, and a shell. And we’ve focused on toughness, comfort and utility to help you live remotely and survive off the land.
Built to hold your life
Every item of clothing has to earn its place in your wardrobe when you downsize and head off grid. So the Off Grid Vest is insanely versatile. It’s made from the same stuff as body armour and military parachutes, which makes it incredibly abrasion resistant. It’s lined with compressed insulation to keep you warm. And it comes with massive detachable pockets on a high-strength Dyneema belt tape so you can collect your own lunch.
Made with the same material as body armour
The outside of the Off Grid Vest is built from an incredibly strong blend of para-aramid fibres and Cordura. On a weight for weight basis para-aramid fibres are 5x stronger than steel, which is why they’re normally used to make body armour and bulletproof vests. We blend these fibres with Cordura, a high tenacity Nylon that you find in protective panels on motorcycle gear. It means that the material can stretch, while being highly abrasion resistant and seriously difficult to damage at the same time.
A 3D ripstop weave makes it even stronger
To make the vest even stronger, we weave the para-aramid and the Cordura into a ripstop fabric. It’s the same construction technique used in wingsuits, hovercraft skirts and military parachutes. What makes the type of ripstop we’ve used so strong is that we weave it into a three-dimensional structure, so that the fibres are layered on top of each other. You can literally feel it with your fingers. It makes the outside of the material super-resistant to tearing, and means that anything which comes into contact with the vest – whether it’s a rock, a branch, or the beak of an angry chicken – will hit the strongest part first.
Water resistant to over 10,000mm
You’re going to spend a lot of time outdoors when you’re living off grid, which means you’re going to experience more weather. And if you’re relying on your own crops for food, you’ll also spend half your life praying for rain. So as well as being highly resistant to rips and abrasion, we’ve bonded a hydrophilic membrane to the underside of the material making it water resistant to over 10,000mm. The membrane keeps water out while still remaining breathable, so you won’t overheat when you need to work hard.
Detachable pockets for gathering dinner
On the back of the vest you’ll find a heavy-duty belt tape with detachable pockets attached to it. If you’re off grid and fending for yourself, you can use them to gather wild food, plants, herbs and fruit, or some eggs. Or to put it another way, dinner. They’re 24cm x 23cm – the same kind of dimensions as a standard stockpot. The pockets close shut with a metal snap fastener and they’re completely removable, making it easy to take them off and fill with supplies, or leave them at home when you need to.
Four more pockets at the front
The pockets on our Off Grid Vest are built for versatility. So as well as two zipped side pockets to keep your hands warm, and a hidden chest pocket, you’ll find a massive front storage pocket that can handle maps, tools, flasks or spare kit. It’s 30cm deep and closes with two heavy-duty metal snap fasteners designed to last. The vest also comes with an off-centre front zipper and metal snap fasteners so you can quickly secure it in place.
A heavy-duty Dyneema belt tape
We’ve run a strip of heavy-duty belt tape down the spine of the Off Grid Vest to help you carry even more gear. The belt tape is engineered with a Dyneema core, so it’s strong enough for clipping on heavy items. And we’ve stitched in six different gadget loops for you to choose from. So you can carry anything from firelighters and paracord, to multitools or carrots.
Lined with super-compact insulation to keep you warm
Our Off Grid Vest is built from an advanced four-layer system. So underneath the super tough outer layer and the waterproof membrane, we’ve built the middle layer with compressed and lightweight insulation. Using the same technique we use in our Nomad Puffer, we compress the insulation to under a third of its original size before stitching it into the vest. So while it takes up 70% less space, it keeps 80% of its thermal properties. The inside of the vest is then finished with a soft, hard-wearing blend of cotton and Cordura.
Our insulation is made from recycled plastic
Instead of pulling feathers out of ducks, we pull plastic out of used plastic bottles and turn them into insulating synthetic fibres. Every Off Grid Vest uses 5 half-litre recycled plastic bottles. Staying warm is all about trapping as many pockets of air next to your body as possible, so these synthetic fibres are built to be hollow, which means you’ll automatically have millions of air pockets trapped next to your skin. And as the curl of the fibres traps more air than straight fibres, the microscopic texture of the fibre itself also retains heat.
How plastic is turned into insulation
To turn recycled plastic bottles into insulation we work with pioneers in thermal insulation based in Milan. They’ve been working on recycled fibres and using plastic bottles in their technology since the 1980s, well before it was the cool or right thing to do. They use a process called mechanical recycling to blend the bottles, eliminating the need for hazardous chemicals and creating synthetic fibres that have the highest loft for the lowest weight, just like down.
How the insulation performs against down
While down traps heat well, it doesn’t breathe well. So it’s not the ideal option if you’re working hard. If you’re on the move our insulation will do a better job of regulating your body temperature, as it will breathe better and won’t hold onto sweat. It’s also made from a blend of different fibres each with their own ‘multi-shape’ structure. Some are designed for puffiness, others for resilience or thermal efficiency. By making each fibre a different shape, we stop them linking together and clumping like down does when it gets wet.
The grid defines modern life
When Thomas Edison flipped the switch on his generators in Manhattan, it was really all about making his cool new lightbulb work. To power those bulbs in a way that was affordable across the planet, he created an electrical grid. And to make the grid work he and his team assembled light sockets, wiring and electric meters and put it all into a single system. It sparked over a century of innovation and invention – from power and water networks, to space travel, the internet, groceries on demand and government surveillance.
But it might be doomed
While early sci-fi writers imagined it creating a Utopian system with limitless personal time and freedoms, things aren’t necessarily going to plan. The resources that currently power the grid are running out – most of the electricity generated globally today is still produced by fossil fuels which take millions of years to create, and oil alone is controlled by just 15 countries. The grid itself is possibly doomed to collapse. Some thinkers like James Lovelock, the pioneer of the ‘Gaia hypothesis,’ believe that the grid will soon fall apart, and that within our lifetimes most of us will see rationing of not just energy, but food and water too.
Wait… how can we run out of water?
Wars over natural resource wars are nothing new. From sugar and spices to oil. But with global temperatures and the global population rising, the world’s freshwater could be next. A recent NASA-led study suggests that just the melting of the glaciers could reduce water supplies disastrously, as they provide nearly 70% of the world’s freshwater. As the population grows, the demand for water to grow crops will only increase. At the same time, heat waves, droughts, tornados, dust storms, rising sea levels and desertification are likely to create planet-wide disruption, food and water shortages, and environmental refugees.
Get your spade out
The fancy answer to the resource crisis is that we’re probably heading towards a more decentralized future, with local microgrids and communities more connected to the things they consume and how they’re created. The blunt answer is it’s time to get your spade and toolkit out – you’re going to need to become the master of your own small universe. Learning to go off grid early is all about building some simple skills. You need to be able to generate energy, source your own water, grow your own food, turn waste back into fuel, and maybe raise a chicken or two.
We already know how to do it
Humans are masters of adaptation. Around 1 million homes lived off-grid in 2010. That number rose to over 99 million in 2020. So the shift is already happening quietly. After the 2011 earthquake and tsunami, dozens of Japanese municipalities shifted from a traditional utility-based grid power system to a more local, resilient model of generating and storing energy when and where it’s used. And today off grid communities are emerging everywhere. From the colder climates of Scotland and Lasqueti Island off the coast of Vancouver, to the heat of California, and Aogashima, the Japanese volcano island.
