Remember that much-loved school backpack you used to haul around with you back in the day? Full of empty crisp packets, battered ring-binders and scrunched up letters that should have gone home to your parents weeks earlier? Well, this is a grown-up version from the kings of contemporary Scandi style, RAINS. Made in their signature waterproof PU-coated fabric, it's a heavy hit of nostalgia combined with streamlined Danish design. The top flap closes with two simple clips, and there are compression snaps at the opening that make rummaging around inside a lot easier. A padded laptop pocket will swallow up a 13" laptop, and it comes with both adjustable backpack straps and a webbing carry handle. Made for city life but equally at home on a weekend jaunt, the 21-litre main compartment gives you loads of room for geometry equipment, yo-yos, bruised apples etc.
There can’t be many outdoor brands gracing the runways at Paris Fashion Week, but RAINS is one of them. Fear not though – stylish as they are, the unisex jackets and bags from this up-and-coming Danish company are firmly rooted in heavy weather and Scandi heritage.
The Danes know a thing or two about rainwear, after all. Copenhagen gets an average of 170 rainy days a year, and since time immemorial, the classic rubberised cotton slicker has been the nation’s wet-weather armour of choice. When RAINS co-founders Philip Lotko and Daniel Brix Hesselager met at one of Denmark's largest textile and design schools, they wanted to take this Viking icon and turn it into something more contemporary. They started out in 2012 with a rain poncho, and quickly expanded into a range of raincoats and water-resistant bags – all in their signature ‘neo-Scandinavian’ style.
They’re textile designers at heart, and that’s where RAINS really shows its class. The specially developed matte-finish PU fabrics are lightweight and waterproof, with ultrasonically welded seams and ventilation carefully designed in.
Fashionable this stuff might be, but fast fashion it certainly isn’t. RAINS’s commitment to ethical and sustainable working stretches from the conditions in their partner factories to their transport logistics and even the lighting in their offices and shops. And at the heart of that, of course, are products that are built to last. If you do eventually manage to wear them out, RAINS will even trade you store credit when you return them for recycling.
