LIGHT as a feather and yet cocooning, the archetypal Mackintosh raincoat is a timeless classic that remains relentlessly in demand. The wearer can stay nonchalant when the heavens open, safe in the knowledge that unrelenting water droplets will simply form minuscule rivulets before plummeting towards terra firma. As Lord Byron notes in Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, ‘big rain comes dancing to the earth’, but such torrents are no match for the rubberised Mackintosh, nor have they been for exactly two centuries, for, in 1823, clever Glasgow chemist Charles Macintosh patented a process of marrying rubber with cotton. He took two layers of fabric and made a ‘sandwich’, giving the otherwise pervious cotton a dissolved India rubber filling. This new material not only formed a barrier to aqua pluvia, but its malleable nature made it matchless for waterproof-coat making. For the first time in modern history (the Aztecs had waterproofed fabrics in the very distant past), people could step outdoors in a manmade fabric and not be drenched by a downpour.
Once a few teething problems had been ironed out—initially, rubber would leach through stitch holes, for example, and early coats gave off a potent whiff in hot weather— the British Army placed an enormous order and Mackintoshes took their first step towards becoming something of a British institution.
Esta historia es de la edición April 19, 2023 de Country Life UK.
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Esta historia es de la edición April 19, 2023 de Country Life UK.
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