Learning from the Swiss – and soaring higher

If you’re familiar with Trakke’s offerings, which have long been Carryology favorites, you know they’re fans of waxed cotton. Not only is waxed cotton a main ingredient in their products; you could say it’s in their DNA. Waxed cotton’s history dates back to the 18th Century sailors from England and Scotland who used it to make clothing and sailcloth. That’s right: sailcloth.

So this one bag travel pack will be the representation of 200 years of sailing innovation combined. Dyneema meets waxed cotton. Past meets present. Or maybe even the future?

We don’t want to just pick out a color off a roll and call it a day. Nope. Alec and I hop in his van and take a few hour road trip up to Dundee, the home of Halley Stevenson. Halley Stevenson makes arguably the best waxed cotton on planet Earth. And they’ve been making it right here within the walls of their Dundee factory since 1864. Alec and the team here have a close working relationship and they’re constantly experimenting with different fabrics, coatings, patterns, colors and more. When we explain the project to their team of mad scientists, their eyes light up.

They pull out a fabric I’m familiar with (after handling the Bannoch), and this stuff deserves its own article. The base fabric is made from cotton mixed with stinging nettles. Stinging nettles! This idea actually came from the Swiss during World War 2. Switzerland, being such a small country with a neutral position in the war, had to maximize what little resources they had available within their borders. And cotton was nearly worth its weight in gold during this time. But they discovered that they could use stinging nettles in a cotton blend, which adds strength as well as a unique ‘salt and pepper’ coloring.

Of course, Halley Stevensons applies wax to this base fabric after it’s combined together, giving the salt and pepper a darker grey appearance. But, again, we’d need to go bigger. Find a way to weave in a modern twist – the ‘tech’. As the suggestion escapes my mouth, one of the Halley Stevensons’s representatives stands and runs out of the room. And a few moments later she returns holding an experimental fabric that was even darker. A special combination of a traditional waxed coating and a modern secret synthetic durable water resistant coating they've developed. We need no more exploration. Alec and I carry the roll, which contains barely enough yardage of this magical fabric, out to the van and run it back to HQ for prototyping.