Rainwear Central Rainwear Forum

In earlier times, the fragrance of a new mackintosh and the frisson it creates and the way that aroma plotted the ageing of that single-texture waterproof has apparently been banished. Is it that additives to hinder perishing are involved? A Lakeland Elements garment I had on approval some time ago smelled synthetic. There is evidence in more historic references to rubberised rainwear to the smell being unpleasant and pervasive. There is even a mention of the odour of mackintosh in a poem of seaside reminiscences by John Betjeman. Has natural rubber gone by the board?

Well, I'm no chemist but from the rubberized garments we have bought, I do think there is a difference.

When the garments arrived there was a definite odor but it goes away very quickly and I tend to think that aroma comes from the material used to stick layers of "rubber" together. Because afterwards there is no smell from the rubber which my wife prefers.

So, I'd like to hear from someone who has more knowledge of the subject. But the rubber does feel great anyway.

I recall reading the Betjeman poem which I think made reference to a rubber sheet on the bed in his school's sick bay. He can be seen wearing a single texture mackintosh in several of the programmes he recorded for the BBC.

I also recall reading a long time ago a full length poem on the subject of rainwear fetishism in a book by Molly Parkin but I have never seen it reproduced anywhere else.

My first mackintosh was acquired in the mid '60s, it was a "Moss Bros. Mackintosh" in off-white double texture and was a full length riding mack with belt. (They also offered a similar coat in a more military style as well as a shorter, unbelted "field coat" in the same material). In their flagship Covent Garden store, they had a separate "Mackintosh department" whilst in my local York branch there was a "Mackintosh room" lined with racks of what must have been hundreds of macks. The "room" - and the mackintosh I tried on and bought - had what I call the elastico-rubber smell of new mackintosh rubber. Signalache is spot on when they say the aroma plotted the ageing and this applied equally to double texture. I wore and enjoyed that mackintosh for many years and as well as the intoxicating smells produced when dampened by rain or warmed in the sun or by other means, the smell very gradually changed throughout the coat's life. As the mackintosh matured the smell lost the slightly chemical element (probably more to do with the early naptha and later glue used to bind the layer of rubber between two layers of cotton and seal the seams) and took on the stimulating and genuine smell of mackintosh rubber. This smell prevailed for many years until, eventually the first signs of perishing became apparent with slight wrinkling of certain areas of the cotton and an increasingly acrid smell. Even towards the end, the single texture inner cuffs and olive drab non-conductor panel around hem and cuffs retained the pleasant smell evident for the majority of the mack's life. That positively arresting and attractive smell would often become very strong, especially in a warm climate/atmosphere and how arousing it was to get a whiff of the smell and then discover who the wearer, or wearers, were and, if on a train or bus for example, endeavour to get closer! The smell of genuine mackintosh invariably divided the "noses" between those like us who loved it and those who disliked it - something of the Marmite syndrome.

I have acquired many, many mackintoshes over the years, single and double texture plus SBR and in my extensive collection now are some really old ones that manage to retain the magical smell of mature mackintosh with no signs of deterioration. I didn't care for Gannex coats when they appeared in the '60s (and largely vanished during the '70s) and was surprised, when trying on a friend's, that not only did it have a rubberised nylon smell but a satin label on the tartan lining read: "This garment is reinforced with pure rubber and must not be dry-cleaned".

Absolutely true that the mackintoshes produced in recent times, either by Traditional at Cumbernauld or Weathervain's Salford factory (formerly David Marsh/Storm Clouds) don't smell the same.

John Betjamin also appeared in a number of black and white TV documentaries in an off-white pure cotton trenchcoat style of voluminous, showerproof raincoat of the type that don't have any aroma of their own at all other than, at times, damp cotton!

Weathervain used to have an enlivening aroma that made me think somehow of chocolate! I recently heard another brand described as having a niff of recycled tyres--natural or what(?!).

There is only one form of natural rubber: Latex. Every other kind of rubber is synthetic. For example, SBR does not mean Shiny Black Rubber, it means Styrene-Butadiene rubber... Polyurethane is a synthetic rubber, as is Nitrile (Buna Nitrile or Buna N) and even Neoprene (Chloroprene) And you can hardly call latex "natural" Natural latex is a sticky, semi fluid that you do in fact, get from trees, but here's the rub: There are chemicals in it that make it smooth and unsticky. Charles Macintosh took natural latex rubber and put it between two pieces of canvas- it was sticky on a hot day and smelly. It was either Thomas Hancock, Charles Goodyear, or the Mesoamericans in 1600 that accidentally invented vulcanization which tamed rubber.