No one does it quite like Oakley. Eyewear, apparel – whatever the brand turns its hand to, it’s always pushing the edges of what’s possible in both form and function. Look back at products from the ‘90s – the Romeo or Juliet, for example – and they still feel wildly ahead of their time. While everything else from that era seems to have aged like mushrooms left at the back of a fridge, Oakley’s has done so like fine wine.
The brand’s true challenge, though, is continuing to design in the futuristic way they were famed for during the turn of the millennium. And through their recent Latitude SS26 collection, they’ve proved they’re more than capable of recapturing some of that ’90s magic.
At the centre of Latitude SS26 is a jacket that is about as golden era Oakley as it gets. The Slingpack Jacket looks relatively straightforward on the surface – lightweight, weather-ready, tons of pockets – but at the pull of a zip, the jacket turns into something else entirely. The chest compartments detach, clip together, and become a sling bag, meaning you can shift from wearing it to carrying it at the drop of a hat. It’s the kind of slightly mad, genuinely-useful design that Oakley remains famed for.
The rest of the collection follows a similar rhetoric. Shorts and trousers are built to take a bit of a beating without restricting movement, while the lighter pieces keep things wearable day-to-day without losing any technical edge.
There’s even a new footwear option in the mix, named the Eon Alpha, which looks just as futuristic (possibly even more) as it sounds.
And if you thought Oakley was going to shoot the Latitude SS26 collection in a white-walled studio, you’d be sorely mistaken. The campaign visuals look as if they’ve ventured to another planet entirely – a monochromatic dimension with landscapes made up entirely of black and white pebbles.
Everything about Latitude SS26 feels a bit otherworldly – which, in Oakley’s case, means they’re back to their best.
The Slingpack Jacket transforms at the pull of a zip, the shorts and trousers handle anything you throw at them, and the Eon Alpha looks like it’s been beamed in from the future. Everything, from jacket to footwear, from cut to concept – hints at a world slightly sideways from our own, and that’s exactly the kind of bold, left-field thinking that makes Oakley, well, Oakley.
The Oakley Latitude SS26 collection is available to purchase now from Oakley
