akimota
Ready for a Rainy Day
The invention of the raincoat in the early nineteenth century is attributed to one Charles Macintosh, a Scottish chemist who grew up watching his father transform a rather pretty species of Highland lichen into a deep purple dye, and was ever after inquisitive about the fundamental nature and mutability of natural materials. As a grown man, he was futzing around in his lab when he discovered that if you painted fabric with dissolved india rubber (latex from the rubber tree), beads of water would bead right off it instead of being absorbed.
Despite the enmity of tailors everywhere, who thought the new material was a right poor idea, Macintosh soon opened his own waterproofing company. One of his first products was the raincoat that bore his name, a brilliant innovation that allowed fishermen and children alike to go out into the driving rain and mud without fear.
The rest is partly history, and partly very much of the moment—particularly this moment, the one in which akimota’s mother pulled a canary-yellow raincoat over her head and let it fall jauntily over one eye, ready for a rainy day’s worth of rough-and-tumble living.
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