Mackintosh

Mackintosh was founded in 1823 in Glasgow by Scottish chemist Charles Macintosh, who patented a method of bonding two layers of cotton fabric with a layer of dissolved rubber in between — creating the first technically-effective waterproof fabric, which became known as 'rubberised cotton' or simply 'Mackintosh.' The original Mackintosh raincoat was developed in the 1830s using this fabric, becoming a defining piece of British rainwear and military-issue British Army outerwear through the 19th and early 20th centuries. The Mackintosh vocabulary settled around several specific products: the iconic Mackintosh rubberised-cotton raincoat (hand-glued by Mackintosh's Scottish workshop using the rubber-bonded fabric construction that has remained largely unchanged since the 1830s), the Dunkeld (a longer single-breasted variant), the Dunoon (a shorter double-breasted variant), the iconic Mackintosh Loro Piana wool overcoats (a hybrid wool-and-rubberised-cotton construction), and a wide range of collaborations with Comme des Garçons (the iconic Mackintosh × Junya Watanabe MAN raincoats), Maison Margiela, A.P.C., 1017 ALYX 9SM, Sacai, and Off-White. Production of the rubberised-cotton coats remains hand-glued at the Mackintosh factory in Cumbernauld, Scotland. Mackintosh is owned by Yagi Tsusho Limited (the Japanese textile-and-fashion distribution conglomerate that acquired Mackintosh in 2007). The brand operates flagship retail in London (Mayfair, Conduit Street), Edinburgh, New York (West Village), Tokyo (Aoyama, Daikanyama), Hong Kong, Seoul, plus extensive Japanese department-store distribution. The Scottish hand-glued rubberised-cotton construction remains one of the rare surviving 19th-century craft practices in contemporary luxury manufacturing.