Haglöfs Jacket Lands Award

Those nice Swedish people from Haglöfs have won another award, this time for their Spitz Jacket, which is due out later this year.

It's yet another triumph for the company after their brand, spanking new 175-gramme Oz Pullover landed a gold European gong last year. This time the award is from the ISPO outdoors trade show in Munich, which is happening right now, and is in the textile category.

The idea behind the Spitz - below - was to develop a heavy duty jacket, designed to withstand abrasion in strategic high wear areas, but to keep it as light as possible along the way. That means using a mix of a strong fabric in areas like shoulders and forearms, but a lighter, more flexible, less bulky one in less vulnerable areas like underarms, chest and stomach.

Designer Fredrik Lundberg - doesn't he play for Arsenal in his spare time - sums it up:

"The inspiration comes from a mix of traditional armouring; turtle shields and the way hedgehogs protect themselves - protect the critical areas but don't restrict flexibility and comfort."

The Spitz uses new Gore-Tex Pro Shell three-ply fabric with a tough Cordura face in abrasion prone areas. The new fabric is lighter and the woven micro-grid backing material offers 'greater abrasion and tear resistance' it says here.

Haglöfs is also working to minimise the number of seams in each jacket with clever pattern cutting reducing weight. A further 15 per cent reduction in weight is due to the lightness of the new Gore-Tex Pro Shell fabric and narrow 13mm seam tape also helps.

The end result is a heavy duty jacket weighing a claimed 495 grammes for a men's large and 430 grammes in a women's size 12.

The Spitz isn't due out in the shops until late summer and it looks like a winning combination of toughness and lightness.

Full details of the current Haglöfs range at www.haglofs.se. More details of the new stuff for 2007 in our links to previous articles below.