There is, outwardly, nothing peculiar about Louis Vuitton’s newest shell jacket. The fully waterproof coat is locked and loaded with all the details you’d expect of a modern hiking shell, like taped seams and rubberized zippers and adjustable toggles. Look a little closer, though, and there’s a soft sheen to the fabric. This is the only clue that the jacket is, in fact, made entirely of silk.

And there’s more where that came from: LV just dropped a wide-spanning “Silk Tech” sportswear collection. 

If you only know silk for shiny smooth pajamas and bonnets that’ll keep your curls intact, it’s almost incomprehensible that the fiber would also inform weather-defeating mountain gear. But menswear’s most vital brands are proving there’s much more to silk than its apparent delicacy might imply. 

Hikers looking for truly silky outdoor gear also have the option of a water-resistant lightweight shell from Loro Piana, the quiet luxury label that’s lowkey an elite outdoor brand, while Icelandic hiker-coded brand RANRA weaves silk with linen for lightweight track jackets and Goldwin, in collaboration with fashion-meets-adventure imprint _J.L-A.L_, invented an advanced new type of cozy high-pile fleece jacket by merging silk with Spiber’s Brewed Protein fiber and bio-based plastic. 

Louis Vuitton

For outdoor brands, silk’s natural properties make it an interesting proposition, since it's temperature-controlling and breathable, while its shiny luster looks similar to technical materials like nylon but with the added benefit of being a natural fiber and therefore biodegradable. However, the silk lore goes far deeper. 

Menswear’s most astute workwear-inspired labels are also weaving silk into their Americana-imbued creations. Last year, Visvim debuted silk denim made by twisting and weaving short silk yarns, a process only possible on old shuttle looms, to create a material rugged enough for workwear with a thick textured weave rarely found in cotton denim. A.PRESSE, the workwear artisan that’s slowly taking over menswear, plays a similar trick with the fiber, incorporating silk into its denim, checkered shirts, and military-inspired bomber jackets, imbuing rugged menswear mainstays with an unfamiliar softness.

These are all places silk wouldn’t normally be, and yet, its inclusion results in a more functional and often more beautiful whole. As Visvim’s founder, Hiroki Nakamura, detailed in a document titled “A Return to Silk,” we’re really underutilizing this versatile fiber by limiting it to silky sleepwear.

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