We believe we haven’t actually earned the right to “design” anything until we’ve done absolutely all our homework when it comes to fabric selection. It’s a common cliché, but it would be like cooking without thinking through the ingredients.
The unsung heroes of our inaugural collection are the designers, engineers and artisans at the mills in Japan and Italy who created the superlative fabrics we’ve integrated across the range.
There are too many to mention all of them here and you can check out the individual product-pages in our webshop to chase down all the details, but there are a few that serve as good examples of how fabrics provide the foundation of the LM.RT ethos.
KOMATSU TECH-KNIT
The team at Komatsu in Japan have earned a reputation for combining tradition and innovation to produce extraordinary fabrics. The idea of taking inspiration from both the past and future represents a shared ambition and underpins LM.RT as well. One example that can be found in the LM.RT AW26 range is Tech-Knit.
It’s geeky and we understand it’s too much detail for most folks, but what they’ve done is produce a knitted fabric (a fabric structure most associated with tee-shirts, sweats and sweaters) using a nearly microscopic filament and knitting it at such high tension that there is essentially no airspace between within the structure. This technique produces an incredibly high-performance outerwear material with integral water-repellency and formidable durability.
Workwear inspired utility is important to us, but another outcome is a distinctive hand-feel, a bit like leather or waxed canvas as well as what designers call “memory”, meaning it seems to remember the shape of your body over time. Most people who put their hands on it will say they’ve never felt anything quite like it before.
SILK DUPIONI
Some might find it odd for silk to be used in a fall/winter collection inspired partly by utility workwear traditions. And that’s fair enough. We have used silks and silk-blends on over a dozen styles in the AW26 range because for us silk can encompass both the function-obsession of workwear and the refinement of find tailoring – a balance that lays at the foundation of LM.RT’s proposition.
Silk is a natural filament that is “extruded” instead of being spun together like wools, cottons or other animal and plant fibers where yarn is created by twisting together extremely short strands making it long enough to weave or knit. This gives it a remarkable strength-to-weight ratio since there are none of the weak-points associated with short strand fibers. This also makes it smooth and comfortable.
Silk dupioni specifically refers to silk produced when two silkworms occupy and extrude their filaments within a shared cocoon creating a one-of-a-kind “slub” pattern which gives the final fabric unique texture and luster.
STAINLESS-STEEL
No. It’s not super common to make clothing out of stainless-steel. It’s done sometimes and other brands sometimes make a very big deal about it.
In our case we’ve used it in a blend combined with rayon (a wood-based biofiber) to produce a fabric that leverages just enough of the qualities stainless steel provides. This includes strength of course, but also “memory”, meaning it seems to remember the shape of your body over time. Most people who put their hands on it will say they’ve never felt anything quite like it before.
To go one step further, we hand-stitched an intentionally irregular quilting pattern using Japanese shasiko technique penetrating two layers of the fabric with a Thinsulate high loft featherless insulation sandwiched inside. The stainless-steel element within the fabrics bring a distinctive surface luster to this assembly.
