Errolson, Burton & The Sony Walkman

Errolson Hugh is a figure who has risen into fashion popular culture over the last 20 years. Works through his imprint, ACRONYM, grew a cult following with their injection of unfathomable amounts of cool tech into, what they intended to be, a daily uniform. With the passing of two decades, there is no better time to take a step back and look at the early ACRYONM days, and more specifically, a momentous piece in clothing and tech history.

While the imprint rose to fame through production of its own line of clothing, back in the mid-90s to early 2000s, it was actually a design consulting studio. Created by Errolson Hugh and Michaela Sachenbauer, it was a company which was contracted to design pieces for other clothing brands. They didn't actually release a namesake collection until 2001, called Kit-1. This allowed for Hugh and Sachenbauer to run with minute overhead and little capital risk, as they weren't required to invest their own funds into the projects. As such, they were able develop and fine tune their skills on the dollar of big corporations, until they were confident enough to release their own capsule.

At the time, although their imprint was not well-known in the consumer sphere, companies and important contingents of the fashion industry were aware of the design prowess that this pair brought. This meant the majority of companies they worked with gave them almost full control over all stages of the design and production, allowing them to spread their wings. Fortunately for us, as the consumer, this allowed for some pretty wild and time-forward pieces to be produced, most of which would hold steady in today’s techwear community and beyond. They worked with companies such as Arc'teryx, Stone Island (under the Shadow Project), United Arrows Japan, and, Burton Snowboards.

With extreme sports at the cutting edge of utility-integrated clothing pieces, and techwear, as a phenomenon, almost non-existent at the time, Burton was a natural place for ACRONYM to test their skills. As previously mentioned, they were part of the contingent which allowed Errolson and Michaela the space they needed to really create something ground-breaking. Burton essentially gave them control of their experimental design component, Analog.

With this freedom came the Analog Clone Jacket. Inspired by the uniform of a storm trooper, it was an extremely modular, futuristic design. It made use of a full 3-Layer GORE-TEX construction with specialised material panelling for mobility, along with an ingenious pocketing strategy. It presented with only two regions of front-pockets, bottom-left and -right, although two sleek zipped flaps on the chest sought to double this space with hidden pockets. This allowed for insane amounts of storage, while maintaining a minimalistic profile, almost like the military uniform for the future. While the design of this jacket, was, and still is considered ground-breaking, there was a special iteration, called the MD, which is what really got everyone excited.

Named one of Time Magazine's coolest inventions of 2002, it solved one of the most under considered, but widespread issues with current snowboarding apparel, music. Team rider and Olympian at the time, Trevor Andrew, provided insight into the constant struggle of needing to take off his gloves to change the song, along with the interference of earphone cords on the slopes. Subsequently, ACRONYM did what they do best, solve a problem that few thought there was a solution to. Well known for integrating high tech materials into their pieces, most notably GORE-TEX, the imprint reached out to SOFTswitch.

SOFTswitch, now defunct, was a company which produced materials allowing for the touch-sensitivity and interactivity of garments. This went hand in hand with the music problem. The ability to produce an external level of interactivity to the jacket, allowing for communication of data to the music device without the need for its removal, made this problem solvable. Using their specialist materials, SOFTswitch worked with ACRYONYM to produce an "inbuilt remote" into the sleeve of the jacket through a material-based data channel linked directly to the media player, no cords needed. Although, there were limitations with compatibility, which meant that they had to produce each jacket with a specific type of player, the Sony Net MZ-N1 MD Walkman, to ensure full functionality, hence the Clone MD name.

While obviously no longer truly applicable to today's society, with Bluetooth controls coming standard with almost all listening devices, it is still an insane piece of tech, which will probably not be replicated ever again. It is one of the many examples which speaks to Errolson's and Michaela's ability to produce futuristic timelessness in their pieces, a complete contradiction being brought to fruition.

While ACRYONYM has become more mainstream, and obviously more capital driven, there is still that feeling of Errolson which is brought to each collection. While the tech isn't as crazy and forward as it was at their peak, each piece almost brings a modest functionality in comparison to some of their older pieces, while still maintaining true to their core. While we know they still have it in them, we will all be sitting around reading about, and being awe-struck by their archives until they start producing some crazy shit again (if they do).