Jeanius Jeans with a difference

Brief

To develop a range of climbing pants to compliment the Alpkit lifestyle range of t-shirts and hoodies. They must be comfortable to wear all day and not look out of place in the pub.

Research

We have been messing around developing climbing pants for several years now but nothing seemed that inspirational about them. None of us crank hard enough be able to slap our name on a pair trousers and sell hundreds on our climbing reputation alone. Then in early 2007 we came across Epic Denim on their stand at an Outdoor Trade Show. As soon as we saw it we heard all those instructors over the years saying ‘never wear denim in the hills!!’ This was exactly the sort of fabric we started Alpkit for. An exciting technology however due to it cost it would be too expensive at retail for most tradtional brands once every step has taken its slice of the pie.

Lets see if it works, we already had a trouser cut just about ready to roll so we sent it to the factory and got a pair made up. The nice guys at DHL dropped them off some weeks later. We tried them on and they felt like demin. We squirted water on them and it splashed off without a mark on the jeans… cool or what! The denim we spec’d has a slight stretch to it and coupled together with the diamond crotch and articulated knees felt extremely comfortable to climb in but didn’t look out of place down the pub. After wearing them for 6 months they had aged nicely and they continued to shed water. Everyone who had worn them liked the cut although the leg length could be a little longer. To quote an early user… “I never climb in jeans, now I don’t wear anything else”.

These look like they are a goer… now we need your help to refine them further. We have had made a limited production run which we are selling through our web shop. When they’re gone, they’re gone and we won’t get any more until we make the decision to run this as an Alpkit product.

Features

1 | Epic Fabric
You can make pretty much any fabric waterproof if you want to but you’ll effect another aspect of its performance to achieve this. The process used by Epic leaves the fabric as close to its original feel as anything we have seen. Unlike many other processes which glue a secondary layer to the face fabric Epic encapsulates the fibers of the fabric with a silicon coating. The amount of silicon used is carefully controlled to leave tiny “micro holes” between the encapsulated fibers allowing water vapour to escape, without allowing outside water and wind to penetrate. As well as making the denim highly water resistant the silicon also makes the demin windproof.

The denim we have chosen to have as our base fabric has an elastane content to help improve the feel for climbing.

2 | The Cut
The cut of the Jeanius pants is not a pure out and out climbing cut. We have relaxed the style to make them as attractive to a paddler loading wet kit on a car as they are to a two wheeled speed demon telling tells of knarly drop-offs over a pint. In future products we may well extend the choice of styles to focus on individual activities but for this coLAB Project Sample we wanted as broader spectrum of feedback as we could get without compromising the cut too much.

2 | Diamond Crotch
The diamond crotch is simply a diamond shaped piece of material in the crotch of your pants. It allows a much higher degree of flexibility on those wide bridging moves or high step-ups without the seams ripping.

3 | Articulated Knees
Probably more style than substance the pre-bent knee just helps the jeans flex around your knee joint.

Notes

Detailed images (opens in pop-up window)

Projects

0Hiro | Your hero at zero | Closed
Jeanius | Jeans with a difference | Closed