Acronym’s cyberpunk techwear has inspired numerous video games

Like most kids in the ’90s, my ideas about futuristic fashion were primarily driven by the self-lacing Nike Air Mags in Back to the Future 2. As I grew older I began to read William Gibson and Neal Stephenson. Their sartorial visions were full of selective minimalism and practical jackets and mirrorshades. You can read more about In Recognition of patterns, Gibson’s protagonist, Cayce Pollard, is “literally, allergic to fashion” thanks to her work as a coolhunting brand researcher, and she sticks to plain basics. She can withstand the world’s inescapable logos with her armor: a Buzz Rickson MA-1 bomber jacket. Buzz Rickson is a Japanese niche company that recreates U.S. military jackets. Gibson collaborated on this collection.

This no-frills philosophy seems in opposition to the business of video games — an industry dominated by relentless marketing, brand sponsorships, and (often) flashy merchandise that translates into easily identifiable fan allegiances. But the Cayce Pollard school of thought is alive and well in games that lean into literary cyberpunk’s fixation on military apparel, as well as the almost cosplay-like qualities of performance techwear that is almost certainly over-engineered for everyday use.

Canadian designer Errolson hugh appears briefly in the Venn diagram’s heart. Death StrandingAlex Weatherstone, Bridges employee. Hugh co-founded the Berlin-based techwear company Acronym. Hugh’s work spans many decades. He has devoted celebrities fans like John Mayer and Henry Golding and Jason Statham. Hugh was a big fan of William Gibson, whose style can be described as part-cyberpunk/part-ninja. NeuromancerAs a teenager. On more than one occasion, he has been described as the “the final boss of fashion,” and wields critical influence on the relationship between real-life techwear and widespread concepts of dystopian video game armor and clothing.

Hugh und Michaela Sachenbacher established Acronym in 1994. The agency was a design firm that provided consulting services for athletic brands like Nike and Burton. A few years later, the label was born. Through its quiet cultivation of “techwear,” Acronym has become a critically influential part of video game clothing and armor design, inviting us to examine our relationship with both in-game and real-life environments, as well as who gets to embody this particular vision of the future.

Acronym garb is a (mostly) monochromatic arsenal of armor-like drop-crotch pants, utilitarian straps, milspec sweatpants, signature “gravity pockets,” and space-age Gore-Tex creations with subtle asymmetries and adjustable hems. Every product has a self-serious, military-style classification code name, like “J96-GT” or “P30A-DSKR-BKS.” The Death StrandingVersions of the J1AGT jacket were sold quickly at $1900. Acronym even produced a gaming laptop for Asus’ ROG line, a carbon-black “Reality Modelling Tool” covered in special etchings and paint. Hugh can be seen wearing his own clothing, the closest to advertising that the label offers. You see his influence not just on screen, but on city streets, where he’s acutely aware that his clothes invite certain assumptions about their wearers’ lifestyles and interests.

The first time I really took a gamelike approach to evaluating my own outerwear was during the 2006 Nor’easter that dumped record-breaking snow on New York. Clothing is a type of armor. I was fighting the elements with a Deprived starting level without a club. But this was long before I knew about Acronym, and I certainly didn’t have the budget for even half a jacket. As spring approached, and the seemingly innocuous sidewalk water puddles were hiding deep in sewer water abysses, I was imagining myself playing a survival game on a tight budget with unnecessary evasion tactics that would have unpleasant consequences in real life. It was because I treated my clothes — sturdy boots, well-pocketed jackets with hoods — like binding pieces of armor that could withstand the violent spontaneity of being young, broke, and making reckless decisions.

Acronym’s focus on looking badass and optimizing human range of motion in clothes — not to mention helping its wearer be prepared for all sorts of environments — aligns beautifully with the aspirational immersiveness of an RPG. Hugh, who is an experienced practitioner of Martial Arts, has a reputation for being able to kick his own pants. “All of my understanding of clothing, and what it could and couldn’t do, comes from martial arts,” he said on the Warrior Collective podcast, pointing to the freedom of his karate gi as a source of inspiration. Maximizing the physical properties of clothing is the key. “Our whole practice the entire time has been about exploring that idea. That control — you, an autonomous being, in an environment that is potentially hostile, definitely changing, giving you as much agency as possible,” he said in a 2020 interview.

If Acronym seeks to mediate the relationship between body and environment, empowering us to kick our way through the day while fending off rain and comfortably carrying 14 pockets’ worth of “inventory,” it’s no wonder that gamers are drawn to its clothes. YouTuber Antwon of This Is Antwon was one of the first people to start making videos about techwear “around 2015, 2016” and, as a gamer, also touches on techwear and gaming. He shows a minor issue with his Acronym Death Stranding jacket on a Zoom conference. The sleeves can be accessed via Velcro, which allows you to raise the arms. “[The jacket]Goretex is used in the construction of this jacket. It’s a really crunchy material, so it barely works,” he says, holding up the sleeve to illustrate his point about the psychological allure of Functionality. “That feature, I think, was introduced when this jacket used a different material, and there, I’m sure it works better. However, in this particular version they kinda thought. Yes, it’s okay, but why?. […] Do many people use it? I very much doubt it.” I briefly imagine Sam Porter Bridges hitching up his sleeves in a downpour of timefall, his forearms instantly withering into sinew. Yes, he could do it, but he probably wouldn’t.

Game designers who work on cyberpunk or military-inspired games will find techwear a source of inspiration. Characters must exude intimidating couture and shinobi energy, as well as being ready to shoot, parkour, hack, and do other things like shooting, hacking,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, etcetera. Acronym provides the perfect moodboard material. Hugh’s appearance Death Stranding wasn’t planned — in 2017, Acronym fan Yoji Shinkawa informally invited him to visit the Kojima Productions office, where he ended up getting a 3D body scan for the game. Shinkawa had already designed most of the outfits, but Acronym provided two at his request — Sam’s undergarments, and a cape based on their now-defunct CP2-S vest/cape hybrid.

Not everyone is a Acronym employee. “There was an art book that came out for [Battlefield 2042], and in there, there are some early prototype composite images of how they wanted the soldiers to look,” says Antwon. “Some of those were literally Acronym product shots, and they put some extra armor and stuff over the top.” Because Acronym is such a lodestar for techwear, even a search for aesthetically similar brands that lean on cyberpunk classics (like this ROSEN-X Mir Bomber that emulates William Gibson’s beloved MA-1 jacket) inevitably reveals its presence. Today, you can still find knockoff copies of Adam Jensen’s black trenchcoat from 2016’s Mankind Split: Deus ExHugh is the author of invited to design for Square Enix. This jacket looked similar to that in Deus Ex: Human Revolution, but Acronym’s changes — mostly functional ones, like including magnets and adaptable sleeves — made it feel like something that could realistically be used in action; in fact, Hugh and his team actually made a wearable prototype for the project.

Besides its practical benefits, techwear has performative ones, too — for starters, its aspirational aesthetic that has an almost talismanic appeal to sci-fi and military RPG fans. Social anthropologist Jay Owens, an avant-garde fashion fan who’s also an avid hiker/mountaineer, believes Performance techwear can imbue its wearers with main-character energy. “It’s a way of fantasizing yourself as a protagonist in the world, not just an NPC,” she says. “The phrase ‘performance fabrics’ supposedly refers to their technical properties […] but it carries a metaphorical freight beyond this,” she continues, pointing to Acronym’s relationship with martial arts. “Gaming is obviously all about performance, so gamers seek out a performance aesthetic, even if the only place they are ninja-ing is on screen. It creates a sense of cogence, a feeling that your values and style is clear and unified — which helps people affirm their identity.”

If the techwear user’s fantasy is to take control of the environment, it’s a fantasy intrinsically linked to the idea of performance. In discussing who is allowed to embody the future, or at least can fit into the confines of traditional fashion, “athleticism” is a foundational part of that role. There’s an unignorable connection to the very physical idea of performance in the real world and the kind of performance expected in games like Ghostrunner and Cyberpunk 2077 — there are of course different builds that use hacking or non-combative ways to solve certain problems, but there’s a baseline sense of physical adeptness required to make the world (and the player’s sense of immersion) believable. Death Stranding, ostensibly the world’s most over-engineered hiking simulator, follows a very traditional postapocalyptic path when it comes to the physical expectations of what it takes to survive a hostile environment.

“In games and films a protagonist might need to have all kinds of skills and capabilities, many of these technical or charismatic and nothing to do with athletic ability,” says Owens. “And yet the idea endures: Being ‘high performance’ as a character is presumed to entail being high performance physically as well — and physical performance is narrowly equated with leanness.”

Owens believes the main barrier to Acronym and its ilk isn’t sizing, but price, and that mainstream fashion has mostly provided for this: “Core performance brands like Nike launched plus sizes in 2017, and Uniqlo, makers of the definitive budget techwear jacket, the Blocktech, [which] runs up to 3XL in womenswear and XXL in menswear.”

It sounds good on paper, but as someone who has fluctuated between a US10-18 over the years, lived in bitterly cold places, and enjoyed snowboarding until my early 30s, I know from experience that Uniqlo’s 3XL pants are not cut to the same standards as regular U.S. sizing. The extended sizing for Nike still skews slim, as do Columbia’s extended size technical jackets. Acronym, which adheres to the same size standards as the rest of the industry, has “regular” sizes that go up to a men’s XL (comparing pant sizes, this is the tight end of a Burton XXL), albeit with some jackets in a “wide” cut. Still, I cannot imagine myself fitting snugly into Acronym’s SAC-J6010, a unisex hooded trench dress made in collaboration with legendary Japanese brand Sacai. The techwear aesthetic is simply not designed for people who fall slightly outside the usual off-the-rack sizes, much less fat people, in the same way you’ll never see a fat action protagonist in a game; again, linked to the idea of performance.

In games, size limitations are rarely an issue — RPG avatars can be made to appear “thicker,” of course, but they’re never fat.Perhaps this is why the notion of surviving in dystopia can be compared to having to follow an involuntary diet or exercise regimen. This makes it a difficult and confusing way to view larger bodies. My cosplay-like fascination with techwear is matched by my fantasical projections of futuristic cyberpunk clothing in video games. You can live life vicariously because you are able to endure the most difficult environmental circumstances in gear that is not designed for women.

Acronym and its brethren are also extremely expensive — there’s an aspirational synergy in the way the clothes are presented, as functional armor for real people, as gamelike outerwear to protect your body, as something rare and unique that’s hard to get. Acronym’s clothing and accessories are made in Europe and the U.S., using pricey materials like schoeller dryskin (a Swiss performance fabric) or milspec materials. There’s the perception that the brand works on artificial scarcity, only making small batches of clothes to hike up demand. Hugh has said, in previous interviews, that it’s because they’re difficult to make, and only certain factories meet the company’s technical criteria.

The result is the same — the small artisanal-style manufacturing and price point only add to the desirability. If you’re broke and can’t afford Acronym, it’s possible to cultivate that same visual techwear identity, but at the cost of having clothes that might fall apart after one wash. Both Owens and Antwon mention that AliExpress offers the full gamut of affordable cyberpunk looks, like this knockoff MA-1 style jacket or these drop-crotch waterproof pants (or “harem joggers”). That is to say, if you’re broke you can still pretend to look the part, but you won’t be able to enjoy or afford the actual technical benefits of designer techwear. Fashion is more important than substance. Cyberpunk 2077 mantra.

For all of Acronym’s self-aware sci-fi aesthetics, its status as a de facto vision of cyberpunk fashion is comically removed from the material conditions that define cyberpunk in literature. It’s a vastly different animal to the aesthetics described in the books that fueled Hugh’s and my own imaginations. His book Virtual Light, Gibson’s scruffy, punkish bike messenger Chevette Washington is broke, lives in a shantytown on the Bay Bridge, and spends most of the text running from a powerful megacorporation. It has everything you would expect from a cyberpunk tale. The jacket is an antique horsehair jacket. Her legs are ridiculously powerful from the hill-cycling around San Francisco. The most high-tech object in the book — a pair of tech-enabled glasses — is something she steals off a man at a party, for fun.

“From a fashion perspective, all of that’s kind of forgotten,” Anton says of the idea that techwear has supplanted the necessary reality of what people would be wearing in a cyberpunk dystopia, which frankly is already here. “It’s turned into the opposite of like, Hey, wouldn’t it be cool to wear this jacket that’s made of other jackets, and then the price is marked up accordingly.” He believes that most of the people who go for this look are kidding themselves if they think they’re actually going to use all the features of an Acronym jacket just to cycle to work in the rain. Even though I am aware of the above, I still long for a J104 -GTPL. Even though the P39PR’s eight pockets will be too bulky for my hips, I still want them. If this metaverse thing works, maybe I’ll be able finally to purchase and fit comfortably into Acronym jackets. But what would be the point in buying “real” digital techwear if it isn’t even in a functioning action game?

Ultimately, Acronym has never described itself as cyberpunk — it’s simply allowed us to project our desires and neuroses onto it. Though if you’re making clothes that exemplify everything exciting and cool about playing a main character in a cyberpunk game, you know that comparison will come. Acronym knows exactly what it’s doing in working with gaming laptops and Kojima Productions. “I think a lot of people who wear [Acronym-style techwear] — something that [Hugh] has talked about — there is still a costume element in there,” says Antwon. Techwear’s detail-oriented nerdery and emphasis on performance is at once insidiously influential on player mentality — yes, you may need space for 50 clips of ammo — and overtly gamelike in the way it appeals to people who like to gamify the experience of navigating their surroundings. In our current world of decay, it is romantic and expensive to imagine a future in which clothes play an integral role in improving performance.

“There’s like a meme of someone talking about cyberpunk and all of the different problems associated with it, like wealth inequality and authoritarian regimes,” Antwon says. “And there’s a person looking at a robot and avoiding all of that other stuff just being like, ‘Wow, cool future.’ It’s exactly that kind of thing, but the fashion equivalent.”