Silvr Lining : Hightech Multi-functional Clothing Co.

Silvr Lining is a design-driven fashion company offering three multi-functional, high-tech fashion and lifestyle brands. Silvr Lining’s design perspective is progressive and green, and it’s business practice pursues sustainability and renewability of materials and processes. Utilization of new technology to enhance the function and performance of company’s products and to bring added value to it’s customers is also embraced. The DUGWEAR (dual utility garments) line combines a California point of view with high quality, certified, organic fabrics to create styles for the active urban lifestyle. MODBOX is a high concept modular dressing system that can be layered and draped endlessly for work, play, and after 5PM, as well. The GO Collection is an urban sportswear line featuring integrated solar charging for personal mobile communication devices.

Lining was conceived in Southern California in 2008 during one of the worst worldwide economic downturns in modern history. The economic crisis coincided with growing global concerns over climate change and clean and affordable energy sources. The founders believe that we have the choice of a brighter future due to humankind’s indomitable optimism, pragmatism, and ability to continually innovate new solutions to evolving problems. Indeed, amid the bleakness, there is a silver lining.

Silvr Lining is based in sunny Southern California with design studios in the garment district of downtown Los Angeles. While the company is a distinctly regional Southern California point-of-view that defines it’s design attitude, Silvr Lining seeks to serve the global active-urban customer. According to the promoters of Silvr Lining they are committed to manufacturing locally, and their products proudly bear a “Made in USA” label.

Ms. Sandra Garratt is the design director of Silvr Lining. Garratt returned to California from New York with the desire to create a new kind of clothing company, one that not only reflected the people and culture of southern California, but one that combined high-performance materials with all-natural, organic, and animal-friendly ones. Garratt describes this choice as being a product of society’s becoming increasingly dependent on technology, while becoming ever more aware of the need to tread lightly and live sustainably. To that end, she created Silvr Lining.

In California, Garratt teamed up with Douglas Holmes, an electrical engineer looking for an opportunity to stretch his creative muscles. Together, they ended up creating Silvr Lining’s GO Collection, a line of urban sportswear that integrates solar panels that allow wearers to charge mobile devices while out and about. The sun is a huge part of life in southern California, Garratt says, and so integrating into fashion as well as technology seemed like the next logical step.

Too many of us believe that a “rich, creative life” belongs to a chosen few select people who “do that sort of thing”.  Wrong, creativity is in everything we all do daily. Beauty is a choice, creating it for any circumstance is an initiative for designers. We all want a happy, healthy, well-balanced lifestyle, not just more clothes. SilvrLining is making a design statement about an emerging Green lifestyle that is techwise and embraces active living in the Sun. We try to integrate Nature & Technology with Style while breathing beauty into busy modern everyday life.The designers and “science guys” at SilvrLining believe that there is new Green inspiration, a focus on energy independence that is moving us forward with progressive, new ideas that help us know that it is time to leave the past behind.…and have a very happy, easy going Summer.  Stay cool! Sandra Garratt Design Director SilvrLining

The GO Collection features a vest, two jackets, and a pair of cargo pants equipped with polymer solar panels. The panels have an attached power pack that can be hooked up to mobile devices to provide a charge. They simply slip into the garments’ pockets, are protected from the elements by a clear patch, and can be removed easily to allow for washing (unlike a certain solar bikini). The panels themselves can be wiped with a cloth for cleaning. Garratt decided on Ultrasuede for the clothing itself, which is made from recycled polyesters.

For her other collections, Garratt prefers natural fibers, but the reclaimed nature of this fabric speaks to her philosophies of sustainability, as she is constantly considering the father-reaching implications of the materials she uses. Even the panels were an experiment in material reduction, as they were designed to be as minimal as possible.

The jackets, vest and pants are unisex, cut loose and casual, but have drawstrings and belts to create, if desired, a more shapely silhouette. “Most of our customers are women,” Garratt explains, “and women are more likely to wear men’s clothing than men are to wear women’s.

It’s kind of a weird stigma,” she adds with a laugh, “but there it is.” The collection comes in a variety of colors, ranging from bright, vibrant shades of orange and magenta to delicate greens, blues and earth tones. Noting that “they’re the colors of southern California,” some of the fabrics also sport a minimalist check pattern, which Garratt explains was taken directly from the pattern made by the circuitry of the panels.

“I think it’s inevitable that solar-powered clothing will become more popular, especially as technology continues to integrate itself further into areas like fashion and design,” Garratt says. She sees the future of solar clothing as becoming, “smaller, tighter and closer,” meaning that relatively bulky panels might one day give way to solar technology integrated into textiles themselves.

So far, the response has been good. Each item is made to order, and since the GO Collection pieces come with two solar packs each, the prices can be a bit daunting to the casual shopper (the cargo pants, for example, cost over $900). However, Silvr Lining has gotten some good press, with clothing from all three lines being featured on the HBO drama Concussion, and catching the eye of Black Eyed Peas frontman Will.i.am and actress Alicia Silverstone. “We’ve had a wonderful response,” Garratt says. “People are really curious.”

And it goes beyond the realm of fashion and into the realm of necessity, too. Garratt sees clothing with built-in power supplies as being a practical solution to emergencies, such as natural disasters where steady power might not be available. In the wake of the 2011 earthquake in Japan, Fukushima rescue workers used the Utility Vest and the Backup Power Pack as a much-needed power source.

Fashion and clothing design might not seem like the next immediate step in renewable energy technology, but technology and fashion actually share a long and close history. “Technology affects agriculture and manufacturing,” Garratt says. “Some of the earliest things to be manufactured on a large scale were textiles, so technology definitely influences fashion.”

Ultrasuede®In 1970, after years of experimentation, Toray Industries scientist Dr. Miyoshi Okamoto succeeded in creating the world’s first ultra-microfiber. A few months later, his colleague Dr. Toyohiko Hikota perfected a new process capable of transforming Dr. Okamoto’s invention into an amazing new fabric, a non-woven material that combined luxury with unprecedented performance. This fabric, which was later trademarked as Ultrasuede®, combines the rich aesthetics of a suede surface with benefits no animal product could ever offer. Ultrasuede® is soft, supple and sensuous to the touch. Yet it’s also resistant to stains and discoloration. It’s even machine-washable or dry-cleanable.Ultrasuede® begins with polymer ultra-microfibers spun so light and fine, a strand measuring more than 50 miles long would weigh less than a gram. These ultra-microfibers are extruded through protective spinnerets, creating what we call the ‘Islands in the Sea’ configuration, with ultra-microfiber filaments “afloat” in each strand. These strands are then transformed via a complex process that includes ironing, curling, cutting and needle-punching into a soft, felt-like material that is then impregnated with a special adhesive binder. Once the material is formed, the protective polymer coating is dissolved with a solvent and the material is further processed to create a fabric that is, almost paradoxically, as soft and supple as it is strong and durable. Magnified thousands of times, this cross-section reveals the densely complex yet mono-layer structure of Ultrasuede®. The end result : Ultrasuede®, a richly complex non-woven fabric offering an unparalleled combination of luxury, appeal, performance and ease of care for an extraordinary array of applications.

Silvr Lining has chosen PowerFilm Solar as its primary supplier of solar panels for its new GO Collection of sportswear featuring integrated solar charging for mobile devices. The new GO Collection consists of four styles. The Director’s Jacket is a hiplength, Bush style jacket popularized by Hollywood movie directors. The Utility Vest is a hooded, Tagua Nut button-front, tech-wise utility vest. The Myer’s Topper is a 3/4 length, over-everything coat. The Cargo Pant is a super easy fit classic design.  Fully and independently functioning solar power supply panels are provided for the front pockets of the GO Director’s Jacket, GO Utility Vest, GO Myer’s Topper, and side cargo pockets of the GO Cargo Pant. Output power is highly precise and conditioned for automatic charging of personal devices. These panels can also be used as self-contained, carry-anywhere chargers, and are USB 2.0 (ANSI) compliant.