Dow Corning’s Active Protection System is a protective textile that instantly becomes rigid upon impact, but remains flexible and breathable when protection is not required. The System consists of a three-dimensional spacer fabric treated with a silicone coating.

This is the state of the art in terms of bomb disposal suits. Its in use in nearly 50 countries and allows people to safely work within a few feet of many explosive devices.

The problem of aerogels being too brittle for most applications has been solved, allowing clothing to be made from it, which will have incredible insulating properties while being light weight.

“Aerogels, invented over 70 years ago, are extremely fragile, hard to handle, and costly to manufacture by traditional means. For these reasons, the commercial industry found it difficult to produce products that incorporated the material. However, Aspen developed a revolutionary manufacturing method that cut production time and costs, and solved the handling problems associated with aerogel-based insulation products. They can now be manufactured into blankets, thin sheets, beads, and molded parts; and may be transparent, translucent, or opaque”

Unlike the other clothing here, Keitai Girl’s outfit is an art piece, but it is extreme enough to compete with explorer gear. Its made from red azuki beans, golden thumbtacks and silvery cell phone keypads.

Sebra make a variety of cut resistant clothing items such as this one piece kevlar suit.

The most extreme form of camouflage outfit is called a Ghillie suit, presumably after Scottish stag hunters. These probably account for the majority of all Big Foot sightings. The page linked to here shows you how to make your own, so that you can steal apples from your neighbors yard.

The fact that modern space suits most resemble these traditional outfits that are worn to go near a blast furnace, tells you something about what a hostile environment space is.

This will help you survive an attack by vegetarians. Its a cultured growth on a miniature leather jacket shaped armature. Its an art piece, however full sized lab grown leather may not be that far off.

If you ever wondered what all the pipes were coming out of a racing drivers helmet, this is what it links to and it can be yours for $500. Its what Bill O’Reilly will be wearing to stop his head exploding when the Democrats win.

This list would not be complete with the most obvious of all forms of extreme clothing - the space suit. Linked to here is a visual history of the US space suit.

As of writing this, Ebay has one of these rare outfits for aution. They are like a one piece version of a down jacket and were designed USAF pilots in arctic survival conditions.

The site says, beware of imitations - No kidding. Just like budget sushi, budget shark suits are a bad idea.

In some ways, what is interesting about this suit is how unremarkable it is to look at, however its features suggest otherwise.

These suits worn by downhill skiers on world record breaking speed attempts create a seamless aerodynamic profile as the skier maintains a tuck.

Amazingly the skiers need to maintain contact with the snow as being in free-fall actually slows them down because of increased air resistance.

SeaAir is the first combined helicopter/ offshore suit. It is made with active intelligent textiles that both cool you down and keep you warm, depending on the situation. It’s ergonomically designed with maximum safety functionality, and it’s the first survival suit with an integrated personal locator beacon (PLB), the Helly Hansen HPL-1

For really cold water you need a dry suit, not a wet suit. This means that all seams and openings need to be absolutely watertight and makes them have to be very well made.

McLaren are known for their combination of state of the art engineering and high end design, from racing cars themselves to their Norman Foster designed headquarters. McLaren teamed up with everyone from the European Space Agency to Hugo Boss to create their cooling suits.

Fire fighting suits with built in thermal detection system.