Bullet-proof clothes that combine safety with style. Print
Heartbreakers
Written by Dave Jarvis   


Bullet-proof vests like the one pictured are a thing of the past for politicians and businessmen and women who don't want protection to stand in the way of sartorial style.
Colombian entrepreneur Miguel Caballero has responded to the world-wide climate of terror by tailoring bullet-proof clothes for the most discerning fashionistas.
From a small factory in the centre of Bogota, Colombia 's capital, Mr Caballero produces a range of finely-tailored blazers, raincoats, stylish shirts, casual denim jackets - and even protective underwear - resistant to a spray of bullets from an Uzi sub-machine gun or a forceful lunge by a knife-wielding attacker.
So successful has his product become that he is dubbed the "Armani of bullet-proof clothing" by a lengthening list of powerful, rich and famous clients.
Among regular wearers today of Mr Caballero's items of bullet-proof apparel are Brazil's president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Venezuela's president Hugo Chavez, Colombian president Alvaro Uribe, the presidents of El Salvador and the Dominican Republic, and Spain's Crown Prince Felipe, heir to the Spanish throne.
Until recently, Colombia held the unenviable title of being the world's kidnap and murder capital - an environment that proved both to be ripe for an entrepreneur such as Mr Caballero and a feature that has helped him as a marketing tool.
"We've benefited from the perception that if it works in Colombia , it must work anywhere else in the world," says Mr Caballero. "We've taken advantage in the sense that we're demonstrating that it's a quality product. If we're protecting one of the most threatened presidents in the world, that's a sign of quality."
Colombia's president Alvaro Uribe has escaped more than a dozen assassination attempts during his career, counts a stylish white bullet-proof guayabera shirt made by Mr Caballero as one of his protective items of clothing.
Mr Caballero started his company with $10 borrowed from his mother in 1992, while at university, after he identified a niche in a market because security personnel were avoiding wearing traditional but uncomfortable flack-jackets.
"The idea was born when I saw a fellow student at university who had bodyguards but they kept their bullet-proof vests in the car because they were too heavy," he says.
"So it was then that I decided to start making the jackets."
Mr Caballero's factory is today staffed by a team of experienced top designers and cutters, and the company manufacturers its tailor-made items from the type of fine cloth you would expect to find on London 's Saville Row alongside a super-strong, hybrid material capable of absorbing the energy of speeding bullet.
Four separate lines of clothing are produced. At one end, the Classic line includes traditional items for military tactical units, such as members of the Colombian military and police, and private sector security teams.
But it is the top-end Platinum range, tailored for heads of state, monarchs, ministers and top executives, that has given Mr Caballero his reputation. The company says it now produces an average of six samples per week. Often of a VIP's favourite item of clothing is reproduced with bullet-proof qualities.
The price tag on the products ranges from $300 to  $3,000 each, depending on the size and the intricacy of the tailoring. With a firearm, Mr Caballero himself tests every single item of protective clothing that is manufactured. The Bogota factory has a small shooting gallery where he can shoot at an item - with someone inside - at point blank range.
Even as security improves in Colombia - the number of kidnappings, according to the defence ministry, fell from 2,477 in 1999 to 376 last year, a decline of more than 80 per cent - it is the country's lingering reputation that has allowed Mr Caballero to expand abroad.
Mr Caballero is cagey about disclosing figures but he says that exports grew by almost 700 per cent between 2003 and 2004, and they now account for 80 per cent of total sales. The company expects to open in Mexico City its first boutique selling fashionable bullet-proof clothing, and it already plans to open a second boutique later this year, in Caracas . While security has improved in Colombia, the kidnapping and homicide rates have risen sharply in Mexico and Venezuela .
Beyond Latin America, the company now also has representatives selling high-security fashion in the US, in Europe and in Asia . Such is the attractiveness of the product, that it is no longer the exclusive domain of burly male bodyguards and powerful men, but also the high-powered female executive at risk and in search of high-security fashion.
"The line of products for women is taking on ever greater importance," Mr Caballero says. "Beforehand it would account for barely 1 per cent of exports. Feminine high-security apparel now makes up 30 per cent of total exports."



 


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