Rohan Hyde

A Schizophrenic Body Wear System for Rohan

The windshirt underpinned the very early lightweight, windproof upper body clothing system that Rohan pioneered. The Rohan Hyde windshirt had many reincarnations over its short life 1980 -1984.

A windshirt was a very simple concept. Put a windproof shell over what is now referred to as your base layer, and you will achieve a very high degree of protection and warmth that far outstrips the weight of the fabric, assuming the fabric is windproof and breathable. The use of Airlight fabric to actually make a shirt and do exactly that was a totally new concept in the late 1970’s. The first windshirt, Rohan Mark 1 Hyde came to the market in 1980. Developed as part of a new, unique  garment system to provide the maximum protection and comfort for minimal weight, quick drying and easy to wear. It came to the market with Jekyll. If you were going to wear the Hyde you had to have something compatible to put under it. It’s hard to talk about the Hyde without reference to the Jekyll, the under Hyde garment. We will cover Jekyll story in a future post on Rohantime.

Extracts from a 1980 Rohan newslette & photo John Cleare wearing a Mark 1 Hyde and Rohan Bags Mark 1.

The Mark11 Rohan Windshirt soon followed. It was an open up the front versions. Poppers not zipped. The Airlight fabric had  become ripstop Airlight. The garment was much sleeker. By 1983 the garment had changed name to the Action Jacket & the Hyde was lost forever. Hyde’s spirit was reborn in the Moving On – that’s another story. Hyde Mark 11 was the start of a new look in outdoor clothing. A much sleeker, cleaner profile than the market was used to. The combined outfit of Bags and Mark 11 Hyde moved the Rohan range nearer to easy care day and travel clothing.

The decision to drop the Hyde was because of problems with the availability of the Jekyll fabric, Dunova.  You couldn’t have a Hyde without a Jekyll, so both disappeared.

Had both Jekyll  & Hyde remained in production and enjoyed similar longevity to Bags would we all be wearing much sleeker garments today?

Sarah Howcroft Co-founder Rohan Clothing

Check out photo’s of Jekyll and Hyde on Rohantime Photo Archive. If you have a photo of Hyde or Jekyll please share it with us.

Ordinary Clothes

The Rohantime Flashback category has featured some great memories of Rohan over the year’s. It is now very popular. A big thank you for sharing your Rohan memories with us all. Keep them coming please. Roger Blowers has recorded his memory below, in a few words it has captured that early spirit. Thank you Roger.

“I was living in Milton Keynes when Rohan moved there and was immediately taken by the innovative designs. I attended a chat from Paul in which he showed a slide of himself with the words “This was the last time I wore ‘ordinary’ clothes”.
He also recounted attended the opening nearby of the Mercedes HQ and how ‘the suits’ looked at him oddly and decided he was definitely not PLU.
He and I had a couple of ‘discussions’ when I suggested design improvements ….I don’t think I ever convinced him!
My first Rohan was, of course, a pair of Rohan Bags, then an Olfio. My late wife spilt bleach on the Olfio. Rohan did a splendid job of putting a patch over the bleached bit; then when I caught the pocket of my Olive one on the Gifford Park door handle, they repaired the rip very neatly.
The joke with the Olive Olfio one was it was the very last in that colour (I still have it), and the shop volunteered to post it to me, but it took NINE DAYS to deliver from the shop/factory to Bletchley (about 5 miles away), by which time I had initiated a search! (I especially wanted it to match-up with some Olive bags).

When I was invited to go on TV’s ‘Kilroy’ programme, I wore matching Bags and the famous ‘over the head’ top whose name escapes me for the mo. Very fetching in a striking, red-brown and green!!

As I am now retired in Spain, I live most of the year in Rohan shorts and tops. I can still sometimes see ways in which I think the designs could be improved….sad that I cannot argue my thoughts with Paul.”

Roger Blowers (wearing four Rohan garments as I type from cold, wet & windy Spain!!)

R.I.P Rohan Shorts

R.I.P Rohan Shorts- The Twins (Sept 1997 – Jan 2010) Aged 12 Years

After many years of robust service in the Joseph household, the bush, construction sites, four wheel driving, and tramping in New Zealand, it is sad to announce the passing of the twins.They pass on to meet up with 2 pairs of bags and one pair of hot bags that have gone before them to Rohan heaven.They are survived by Olfio Sweater (b. 1985) – semi retired; Pampas Jacket (b.1985) – Still going strong; a heavy winter fleece jacket “Fred” (b. 1987) and Warm Pants (b. 2002).

Recent additions to the Rohan family are three pairs of bags, 2 pairs of shorts and a fleece sweater (all b.2008).

My 1985 Olfio is getting thin & worn on the seams but is still alive & kicking down here in New Zealand. My wife won’t allow me to wear it in public but it still goes out in the rucksack in the hills and was worn on the World Classic “Tongarario Crossing” a few years ago.

The Olfio was a great companion to a pair of Hot Bags for many years in the Peak District walking & climbing with Scouts & Derby Mountain Rescue Team.

Sadly the Hot Bags were savaged & torn apart climbing a barb wire fence during a night search for a missing person.

I agree with others – BRING BACK OLFIO.

For the ABSOLUTE BEST in outdoor / travel clothing then buy Rohan.

Richard, Auckland, New Zealand.

Was this the First Olfio?

Was this the first Olfio? Paul Howcroft’s own OLF10-Ferrari 308 GT 4-2+2. Business must have been good that year. Thank you Ed and Ade Rudler for the photo. However, was this the first Olfio?

We have referred to the naming of Olfio in a few posts on Rohantime. Olfio was indeed named after a car registration plate that was used on a number of Rohan vehicles. Thank you to all who mentioned it. Now is a good time for me to own up to the fact that Rohan Sohao was also a number plate.

It is good to know that some Rohan traditions go on. My first visit back to Rohan Milton Keynes head office for many years was last year and the first thing I saw that stopped me in my tracks was Ofio. There it was, outside Milton Keyne head office, on a beautiful black Land Rover. That raised a smile.

A number of 4 wheeled Olfio’s have passed between the Ferrari and the current Land Rover. The  picture below shows one, the Range Rover with Susan and Allan in Rohan Olfio’s and Rohan Bags 1985.

Are there any photos and stories of the other cars that have carried the Rohan Olfio number plate over the last 25 years?

See a great example of the Rohan Olfio as part of the Rohan Originals collection in Rohan Keswick and Rohan Guildford

Check out to Rohantime Flickr some great photo’s of Olfio taken from the Rohan Catalogues 1985 – 1990.

Sarah Howcroft

History of Rohan Clothing

Message from Warren McLaren

Congratulations on Rohantime. Such a great service the current Rohan team are providing. It’s wonderful that the creative energy so apparent in the early decades of the Rohan story is being captured and archived.

A shame this isn’t true of many other iconic outdoor companies. For prior to the outdoor industry becoming substantial enough to attract corporate investment, the founder/designers of many outdoor brands poured their heart and soul into these ventures to produce cutting edge product. Their imagination and passion inspired me to also want to design outdoor gear. Along the way, I amassed a sizeable collection of gear and clothing catalogues.

About 18 months ago I had the vague idea of collating some of those outdoor product innovations into a form of web database. Alas, having my first child interrupted the process somewhat, so the project is a tad incomplete, but the Rohan profile is reasonably full. It might interest your readers, as may the product heritage of other British brands like, Berghaus, Blacks of Greenock, Karrimor, Ultimate and Wintergear. If time permits (ha!) I hope, one day, to fill in many missing details. And brands.

Endeavours like Rohantime, and Berghaus re-releasing their original 30 year old Trango jacket, suggest that, as the outdoor market has become increasingly homogenised, active people still hanker after a time when passion drove designs, not sales charts. Maybe my effort, called ‘Compass: charting the evolution of outdoor gear,’ can add a little something to that resurgence of interest. Direct link to the Rohan profile

cheers, Warren.

Rohan Bags for Bags

We have been sharing stories of our old Rohan Clothing on Rohantime, some still going strong or handed down to the next caring owner. We have discovered another little talked about option, reuse. Below is a great creative example from Cath. If you have any Rohan Clothing reuse options please share them with us all.

“My mum said she was making a bag out of some old Rohan walking trousers and I thought this was a good idea… so I nicked the idea for myself! I cut the pockets out and sewed them together.

The bag has lots of zips and pockets in it, making it the perfect size to carry the Time Out Book of Country Walks”

Check out other innovative ideas on Caths Flickr Page

My Recent Visit to Nepal

One of the nice thing we have observed on Rohantime is the diversity of exploits and endeavours members of the Rohantime community are up to. Some great stories are coming in to Rohantime from dedicated very long standing Rohan customers. This story from Barbara Holl is a great example. We first caught up with Barbara on Rohantime Facebook. Barbara has been involved in creating a new NGO to protect the interests of children resident in a hostel near Sundarijal National Reserve, on the edge of the Kathmandu Valley.

I planned my visit and booked my flight in May 2009 hoping that my husband would have recovered from his two hip operations to cope without my cooking and help. The plan was, this time to stay only three maximum four weeks. The timing was to ensure that the main festivals of Deshain and Tihar/Deewali had finished and that I might to able to start and conclude some work for the charities I am actively involved with. I underestimated the number of days lost to nationwide strikes.

The pleasure and leisure aspects of the visit were to see my adopted Nepali family and assess their progress since I was last with them in 2007. During that visit we were able to open bank accounts for the children and also their mother Sita. I encouraged them to save small amounts of money and they took this on board as we had kept a crock money box each year since I became their guardians.

This visit saw Arjun ( father and trekking guide) ask me to fund a special visit for his parents to the sacred temple at Manakamana. His parents would leave the village in Langtang and come to Kathmandu and the next day we would take the tourist bus to the cable car for the ride up to the village. The most significant aspect was for the parents to make offerings at the temple but before this could happen we had to wait in line for the cable car and then in the square with the temple again wait in line for more than 4 hours to reach the inside and receive a blessing and make their offerings of fruit, nuts and flowers.

The protocols dictate that fasting must take place from waking until after the offerings have been received. The number of people feeling ill and needing some help gave me an opportunity to assist even though I was the only white face amongst a sea of brown. The number of sacrifices and offerings made of live animals did not bode well for Arjun or his parents. The previous day, Saturday 12th was New Moon when no animal sacrifices could be made and therefore there were double the number on the Sunday, the day of our visit. It was also the day I had planned to be flying back to the UK, but I needed to complete the tasks for the charities so accepted that I would be in Kathmandu until the end of the year.

Our journey back to Kathmandu seemed never ending and the traffic volumes swelled in line with the number of large potholes and broken down trucks. I had made my extended family happy that they fulfilled their obligation as Hindu Brahmin to make a visit to a sacred temple. Thank you is not a sentiment expressed in Nepal but Arjun and Sita acknowledged the “gift”.

Dr. Barbara C Holl PhD, MSc, LLB, C.Eng. Contact Barbara

What’s in a name?

And now for something completely different

Rohan Sohao circa 1983/4. The story of the Rohan Sohao is worth recording. Not because it was a record breaking popular Rohan garment of years gone by. More because it illustrates early Rohan thinking.

What was the Rohan Sohao? The story of Sohao cannot be told without reference to the story of the Olfio. Date early 1980’s, Olfiio and Sohao were introduced to the market in early previews as a Tech Pullover – the Arran sweater gone high technology. Both garments were definitely high tech but had no likeness to the Arran sweater, other than they kept you warm. Both garments weighed under 600 grams each, were windproof, lightweight, dried very quickly, small pack size and had lots of zipped pockets. Not the description of any Arran sweater.

Both Olfio and Sohao were constructed from Rohan Airlight™ and an Insuflex inner. This was the first of a number of fabrics in the Rohan Insu range. Innsuflex was Rohan’s answer to lightweight synthetic insulation. The decision was made not to go down the fleece road and instead develop a lightweight and soft insulation wadding layer, unique to Rohan. This fabric was not only used in the Olfio and Sohao but also Hot Bags, Wild Vest, Big Kids Suits and the children’s range. We will get to them all in future posts on Rohantime. The polyester wadding was laminated to a thin cotton model knit. This stretched with the body and offered a high comfort factor. Most of the production was a strong  gold colour, which gave the garments in this range a very distinctive identity. The combination of Airlight fabric and Insuflex provided a very windproof garment. It was a development trend that, if progressed, would have taken the company down a very different road. However, the seduction of fleece was then and remains very strong.

The garment design of both Sohao and Olfio was progressive. Olfio was an over-the-head garment, Sohao front opening with an extended lower front flap. Early Rohan garment design favoured over the head jackets because they are so much more efficient. If we released an over-the-head and front opening version of the same garment the market would take up the latter regardless of the superior function of the former. So the answer was easy, make the Sohao design really progressive. That is why the Sohao looked like it did. Sort of reversed marketing.

The following is an extract from a Rohan newsletter dated 1985, I think it tells all…

Both Olfio and Sohao illustrated the commitment to design and innovation that was such a feature of all early Rohan garments. There have been no other garments like them since. The development trend of using ultra lightweight synthetic fillings is just starting in the market now, 25 years later.

The Sohao was used by Chris Townsend on the Continental Divide Trail in 1985. This is Chris’s words on his experience of  the Sohao and Wild Vest on the trip

“In the years between my PCT and CDT walks Rohan had developed new designs and introduced new materials, most noticeably a light, thin synthetic fill for insulated garments. Because Rohan didn’t make warm clothing in 1982 I’d carried a pile jacket and a down vest on the PCT. On the CDT I took Rohan’s new synthetic insulated Sohao Jacket and Wild Vest, a combination that was lighter and more compact than the PCT clothing and just as warm. As the garments were shelled with polycotton they were also windproof, unlike the pile jacket, and quick drying and reasonably warm when wet, unlike the down vest. These properties were important in the Rockies, especially when cooking and eating outside. Worn together the two synthetic tops kept me warm in below freezing weather whilst I was sitting outside waiting for the dinner to cook with no need to protect them from wind or rain.  Today similar garments are found in every outdoor shop. It’s only in the last decade they’ve become popular though, twenty years after Rohan first made them”.

The good news we will all see a great example of the Sohao as part of the Rohan Originals collection in Rohan Keswick.

One last question: Where did the name Sohao come from? Answers please. Hint – Olfio still travels well!

Sarah Howcroft Co Founder Rohan

Stop Press: Just uploaded to Rohantime Flickr some great photo’s of Olfio taken from the Rohan Catalogues 1985 – 1990.

Rohan All Lite Up

The picture above is all that is left of any illustration showing Rohan Flashback garments. Flashback was another very early bespoke Rohan fabric. Created for a particular end use. We have mentioned on Rohantime another early Rohan fabric development in the Rohan on Everest post.

This is a transcript of the above text regarding Flashback published in the 1982 catalogue:

Flashback
“Amazing night-time safety fabric which was introduced by us about 5 years ago to glowing reviews in the press and enthusiastic testimonials from users. However, numbers sold didn’t really justify full scale production. Recently though, we’ve been remaking some for special customers and have produced a few dozen extra which we will now sell off at a fraction of the cost. In daylight, Flashback looks and feels like a high quality close woven polyester cotton (which, not entirely by chance, it is ). Come nightfall, however, the wearer appears to glow brightly in the lights of on on coming motorists, giving motorists ample warning of your presence ( and a breath test if he tells the Police what he saw). The secret is millions of glass spheres in the fabric which throws direct light back onto its source – but not to the peripherals of vision, thus avoiding “corner of eye” sightings which could alarm drivers.

The fabric is comfortable and highly water repellent, although less breathable than some.The design we used is that of an Action Jacket with its long back, folding hood and four security pockets/ The special offer price is only £35.00 and it makes me weep”.

Note this is the uncensored version. Even today this would raise eyebrows. I can just see it in the cycle mags. £35.00 over 29 years ago was a little high!

The first Flashback garments came to the market in 1978/79. The garment was called Road Runner and the fabric was called Early Warning. Road Runner was a two piece suit, similar in style to the early Action Jackets. The jacket was lined with a terry polypropylene lining. This made it very expensive indeed. The second reincarnation of Flashback garments had no lining.

Flashback way ahead of its time.

Sarah Howcroft

ps. Stop Press…

I have just been told by Ben Rohan Keswick that a Flashback Garment has been donated to the Keswick Rohan Original collection. Ben told me the jacket has joined the ever increasing Rohan Originals collection in the Keswick shop. A big thank you to Ian and Anne Ellmore for the jacket. Ben also mentioned that the collection has had some other really interesting editions, read the latest story from Rohan Keswick. Or better still if you are one of the lucky ones who will be in The Lakes this Christmas or New Year holidays call in and see the collection.

Is this a record?

Dear Rohan

I thought you might like to know that I’ve had a long sleeved knitted overhead shirt since about 1975 (purchased at Long Preston!) that worked hard as a climbing shirt, moved on to a MTB base layer and has now been used by my adult son for 10 years as a winter base layer for his competition cycle race training. Its been washed a million times, got no wear, no rips and my son says its the warmest winter base layer he has ever owned. Congratulations! Is this a record??

from Mr Francis Laycock

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