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Vollebak, the experimental clothing company founded by twin brothers Steve and Nick Tidball, has built a global following through products made from space-grade materials, fireproof fabrics and biologically engineered textiles.
The brand currently sells exclusively online, operates on a 12-18-month development cycle for most products, and counts customers working in robotics, AI, physics, engineering and finance among its customer base.
The London-based label held its first pop-up shop in May, will show at Paris Fashion Week this year to assess whether wholesale is a viable route, and is developing eight experimental projects for 2026, three of which involve wearable technology. The first of these, the Sonic Jacket, is already in development.
The twin brothers make a strong team, with their responsibilities having always been clearly divided across the business. Steve leads strategy, while Nick oversees the creative direction – a dynamic that mirrors the roles they held throughout their respective advertising careers.
We gained an in-depth insight into the business from Nick, who spoke to TheIndustry.fashion about the brand’s origins, its testing methods, how it continues to push the boundaries of what the future of clothing could look like and where it is heading next.
Can you tell me about the origin story for Vollebak, what first sparked the idea to launch the brand?
It was probably a few things to be honest:
A love of Ferran Adrià who ran El Bulli at the time, the wildly future facing restaurant, and our basic first principles idea was ‘why is no one doing utterly future facing ideas in clothing?’
Around the same time we were running ultra marathons in our early thirties – we realised that we could do fairly tough things and the tougher it got the more we enjoyed it.
Thirdly, was reading the Steve Jobs book by Walter Isaacson – which was a revelation in how to redefine an entire industry.
Then finally my background in architecture, where I was utterly obsessed with materials and the built form.
To what extent did your and your co-founders’ shared background in advertising influence the way you built Vollebak?
I think it taught us that if you do exactly the same as everyone else it won’t work.
Probably our biggest lesson in advertising was watching Lee Clow at work in Chiat/Day in LA, who had written all the greatest Apple ads ever, including the ad “Think different” that really stuck with us.
You describe the brand as tackling some of the fundamental challenges of the next century, from space exploration to climate change. Where does fashion fit within that vision?
I don’t massively see it as fashion – I see it as clothing.
In the same way the human needs shelter and so the by-product is houses.
The human needs protection from the elements and other things, so for that you have clothing.
We simply try to clothe people for stuff that’s happening now and in the future, with some materials that man has invented in the last few years – as opposed to materials that were invented 3000 to 100 years ago.
How have you built community around Vollebak?
Mostly word of mouth to be honest. We think people are always on the look out for utterly unique things – especially when they push forward what people believe to be possible in an industry.
I think also having me and my twin brother as the people who run the company is a thing that people like and understand. We run a very transparent company – which our community likes because it’s not some polished faceless brand.
We then also do some fairly maverick things – like building a Spaceshop that we are taking around the world, or hiding a wardrobe full of free clothes in the New Mexico desert, or running a huge billboard outside of SpaceX telling Elon our jacket was ready for space travel.
Your products are designed to withstand quite extreme weather scenarios. How do you test your product efficacy before releasing them?
Most stuff I test on myself, and some we test before they are products. If we get access to fireproof materials, for instance, the first thing we will do is take a lighter to it in our office.
And then some of our stuff has already been tested for us – our Mars parachute was tested by NASA landing the rover on Mars. So as far as tests go, we’d say that fabric is pretty good at the job it was built for!
What does the development cycle look like from idea to prototype, to commercially viable product – for example for your latest product, the Sonic Jacket?
The Sonic Jacket will have a longer lead time than your typical products that’s for sure! It’s a wild series of challenges that’s more like building a car than a piece of clothing. But we knew this would be the nature of it when we went into the challenge.
Nearly all of our products are on a 12-18 month cycle from ideation to being commercially available. We haven’t tried to reinvent that process.
The Sonic Jacket
How do you balance commercial viability with product innovation and experimentation?
It’s a tricky balance to be honest! We see experimentation as the fundamental building block of progress, so we will always push to experiment as much as possible – otherwise we are not moving forward.
How would you position Vollebak within the technical outerwear, or technology space?
I’m not sure where I’d position us. I think of ourselves as a clothing company very simply – kind of like the maverick outsiders in the industry. A company who try to take on a myriad of clothing challenges within the industry.
Here are a number of the challenges we are taking on:
- How do we make clothes last 10x longer?
- How do we make clothes for the harshest environments on this planet?
- How do we start experimenting with space materials for the inevitability that we will become a multi planetary species?
- How do we create clothes from the cutting edge biology and science being done right now?
- How do we help bring pioneering materials to the market before anyone has even heard of them?
- How do we build clothing that can change your brain state?
What is your commercial model, is it mostly D2C or do you also have any wholesale accounts?
Currently we sell only online. We had our first pop up shop in London this May and it was a super successful 3 days. I’m very interested in having a super brutalist futuristic shop permanently. And we are showing at Paris Fashion Week this year to see if wholesale is a route we want to pursue.
Can you paint a picture of the typical Vollebak customer? What are they looking for when they buy from the brand?
Typically we have customers all around the world that are united by one thing – and that’s intellect.
We have an extremely smart customer base that work in a huge number of industries from robotics, AI, physics, design, engineering, the arts, and the financial world.
And when we meet our customers they are super smart, super aware of how the world operates, and hyper aware of their choices and the lives they lead and why.
Is there a piece of feedback that you have received from a customer that has stayed with you, or that had a material impact on the brand?
Yes, very early on a very clever guy told us to make clothes that are very wearable – so we stick to that – as a couple of our early pieces weren’t easy to wear.
Is there a piece of advice that you would give yourself if you started the brand all over again?
I think it would be a simple piece of psychology along the lines of ‘there should be zero expectation that everything should go right and that the journey will be smooth’.
This is an impossibility! It would have been good to know that from day 1.
The same can be said of life. It’s a wild journey – but it very rarely works out in the ways you think it will.
Can you tell me anything about your upcoming projects on wearable tech?
We are doing a series of eight projects this year that we would class as really pushing the boundaries of clothing. I think it’s massively important to do projects that are pure moonshot ideas, it’s very important to test the limits of what we are capable of.
Three of these projects this year are to do with wearable tech. The Sonic Jacket is the first idea of those. The other two are still in the R&D phase – so I can’t talk about what they are yet! But one is to do with light.
Are there other products or industries that you’re thinking of exploring next?
Purely from a personal level – the one product I want to make is a chess board from utterly wild materials. I believe chess is the most beautiful metaphor for life.