Vollebak Prepares for End Times with Protective Yellow Trench Coat

Vollebak has launched the FWAHBL jacket—short for For When All Hell Breaks Loose—as a limited edition of ten entirely yellow trench coats. Cut from the exact material used to manufacture airtight chemical protection suits, the jacket arrives at the center of a fictional universe complete with a comic book, film-style trailer, and playable video game currently in development. For a coat conceived around chaos, the rollout is remarkably organized.

Its outer shell is constructed from double-faced polychloroprene rubber coated onto both sides of a woven polyester core. The material is engineered to resist chemicals, oils, ozone, flame, and weathering, giving the trench coat a considerably tougher résumé than the average rain jacket. Still, Vollebak stresses that it is not certified safety equipment, emphasizing that this is clothing for bad weather and existential dread rather than wandering confidently into an actual chemical spill.

Stock photo for illustration only, not from the actual event

The textile itself is engineered by Fothergill, a British manufacturer that has developed protective materials since 1847. The company first supplied the British Army during the Boer War, while its fabrics have since been utilized across helmets, body armor, and military vehicles in the Gulf, Bosnia, and Afghanistan. Today, its production ranges from chemical protection suits to reinforcements for ballistic armor.

Vollebak leaves little room for the industrial material to look discreet, finishing the trench coat entirely in yellow and delivering it inside a garment bag made from the very same chemical-suit textile. Rather than disguising its protective origins, the design turns them into its principal visual language, though the bright hue suggests keeping a low profile was never part of the emergency plan.

The jacket arrives in packaging modeled after a video game box, featuring graphics that span four decades of gaming history. Its fictional world begins with 1980s 8-bit arcade cabinets, moves through 1990s home-console adventures and action titles, and lands in today's near-photorealistic environments. Vollebak also produced a trailer shifting between these gameplay eras, while a playable FWAHBL game remains in development.

Source: designboom