Two centuries of Scottish technique, fifty years of Italian sportswear. What this first collaboration says about rainwear as an object of culture.
There’s a manufacturing constraint in the Mackintosh coat that few people know about. Rubberized cotton – two layers of fabric framing a core of natural rubber – cannot be machine-sewn without the needle puncturing the material’s watertightness. Each seam must therefore be sealed after assembly, taped and reinforced by hand, by the same craftsman who cut and glued the piece. A Mackintosh coat is not assembled on a chain. It’s made by a pair of hands, from start to finish, in the workshop in Cumbernauld, Scotland.
This constraint – and not a brand story – was the basis for the first collaboration between Maison Mackintosh and C.P. Company.
The bezel as pivot
C.P. Company was founded in 1971 by Bologna-based graphic designer Massimo Osti. The name Chester Perry, then C.P. Company from 1978, marked the beginning of a systematic exploration of technical materials in civilian clothing. The Goggle Jacket – a jacket with an integrated hood and goggles attached to the collar – was born of this period. It’s not an aesthetic detail: the goggles are functional, pivot-mounted, portable or fold-down depending on use.
The collaboration grafts this removable, bespectacled hood onto the Mackintosh coat. The result is a structurally dual garment: the base is manufactured according to 1823 methods, sealed with rubber solution, waterproof by construction; the top borrows a logic of urban protection developed in the seventies in Emilia-Romagna.
What the place of manufacture says
Both pieces in the collaboration – the revisited coat and the rubberized cotton Goggle Jacket – are made in Scotland. This choice is not insignificant. C.P. Company has its own production facilities in Italy. Transferring manufacturing to Cumbernauld means accepting the constraints of Mackintosh material as a condition of collaboration, not as decoration. The workshop dictates; the design follows.
Detail – The rubber solution bonding technology used by Mackintosh since 1823 is still patented and produced exclusively in Scotland. It makes the fabric waterproof without the addition of a synthetic membrane – unlike Gore-Tex or similar techniques, which apply a film to an existing substrate. Waterproofing here is intrinsic to the fabric’s construction.
The question posed by this collaboration will be decided by use: does the Goggle hood fit on the shoulder of a coat designed for Scottish drizzle as well as on the shoulder of a jacket designed for the Bologna metro? The answer lies in the hands of those who wear both pieces. Available from February 26, 2026.
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