You’re dismounting from your bicycle just as a bout of unexpected drizzle slows. Thanks to an oversized, salmon-colored inflatable pocho, you and your belongings have arrived at the destination completely dry. But with the grass still damp, you need a non-soggy place to settle down and get some work done on your tablet — your tablet, that I might add, has been safely stowed in your pocho’s front pocket since you left your house that morning. You remove your rain gear and hang between two trees because, naturally, the jacket doubles as a hammock.
The transformative garment I’m describing now exists and is available for pre-order from Amsterdam-based designer Maium. Lenovo commissioned Maium, along with two additional international designers, to create inventive outerwear built around the company’s tablets. All three of the pieces present practical means to tote around a Lenovo Tab, as well as other functional elements for using your device when you’re on-the-go.
I had the opportunity to try on items in the new Lenovo Tab Wear Collection ahead of its official reveal on November 2. As someone who loves clothing and tech pretty equally, I’ve not often seen products that successfully unite the two categories. So when I first heard that Lenovo’s tablet division had developed an outerwear line, I tempered my expectations.
But, as it turns out, wearing tablets can be fashionable.
After cocooning in Maium’s inflatable pocho, I zipped into a sleek anorak from RANRA, the London/Reykjavík-based studio. At a glance, the olive-green garment looked like an unsuspectingly modern raincoat. But upon pulling the extended hood over my head, I found myself isolated from my environment. My senses of sound and sight were tunneled through only the jacket’s hood.
This makes the coat ideal for focusing on what’s directly in front of you. In this case, it would be a Lenovo Tab. There’s a front-zipped flap that unfolds to reveal a dock the size of a tablet. The flap holds a bungee-cord strap that I pulled over my head and around my neck to create a hands-free tablet canopy. If I wanted to stream my favorite show to catch the highlights of a sports game while out in public, I imagine this light- and noise-blocking coat would come in handy.
Hong Kong-based Kit Wan Studios created the third piece in the Lenovo Tab Wear Collection. Known for one-of-a-kind pieces, what the studio presented is nothing short of a piece of art. I can best describe the coat’s look as body armor meets anime meets cyberpunk street style.
Kit Wan’s coat is almost entirely modular, with pieces that layer together without disrupting the unique pattern. There are a number of functional pockets and pouches, with one specifically dedicated to holding a tablet stylus. Meanwhile, the tablet itself is housed in a harness that can be worn with or without the rest of the coat. You could use the rest of the material as a blanket if you find a spot you’d want to sit down and use your tablet.
While the latter two garments won’t actually be available to purchase, the three pieces are meant to demonstrate what happens when fashion is tasked with not just accommodating — but embracing — our tech devices.
