An unspecified number of US servicemen appear to be using cooling vests that were invented and created by a so called “furry” enthusiast, a member of an “Internet subculture centred on dressing up as anthropomorphic animals,” the Daily Beast reports.
According to the media outlet, the vest, EZ Cooldown, was designed by a Dutch man named Pepeyn Langedijk who sought to deal with overheating while wearing his fursuit but found the existing military cooling vests too bulky for his tastes – “heavy, thick around the waist, and not user-friendly for costumes.”
Compared to military models, his creation is slimmer, with cooling packs filled with a “proprietary chemical blend” being placed “in the small of the back and high up on the chest to complement the owner’s body".
And while Langedijk and his husband Tom, who jointly run their EZ Cooldown business from Amsterdam, don’t have any official military contracts, a group of US Navy servicemen in Japan reached out to them, asking whether the vests could be shipped to military bases.
As Langedijk explained, “the service members ended up buying 10 vests, then their friends bought 20, then 30,” with the media outlet pointing out that while the US Navy did not respond to requests for comment, an Army spokesperson revealed that “soldiers were known to buy cooling vests in an individual capacity.”
The Dutch vestmaker also noted that “roofers, miners, offshore drillers, surgeons, video game testers, pet owners, and sports league mascots have all written to say they love the vest in their specific contexts,” while his company now sponsors NASCAR driver Ted Minor and “several well-known cosplayers” with free vests.