Fieldbar: A Return to Outdoor Luxury
Leah Ermann
The New Standard of Outdoor Luxury
Born in Cape Town, a city shaped by design, history, and craft, Fieldbar is a South African brand redefining outdoor luxury. The brand designs and makes its cooler boxes in its own factory, where skilled local artisans focus on quality and detail. Each Fieldbar cooler draws inspiration from safari heritage, where remote camps needed products built to last. As a result, every design choice serves a purpose. Above all, Fieldbar supports a return to quality, valuing repair over replacement, care over convenience, and quiet elegance over noise. The result is a cooler box that travels, holds memories, and lasts a lifetime.
Cape Town plays an important role in shaping Fieldbar’s identity. For generations, the city has been a meeting point of people, ideas, and ways of making. The people of Cape Town and South Africa carry a deep resilience and a commitment to hard work. South Africa’s long tradition of craft has passed through generations of hands that value patience, precision, and pride in workmanship. Moreover, the surrounding landscapes from coastline to mountains to open plains encourage designs that are practical and built for changeable conditions. As a result, objects made here are shaped by both beauty and necessity.
Safari Heritage
Fieldbar’s safari heritage sits at the core of its product development; it is the brand’s DNA. In remote safari camps, objects must be reliable, purposeful, and easy to live with. As a result, every detail has a clear reason to exist. This same mindset shapes not only product design but also the way people approach outdoor leisure. There was a time when outdoor experiences were treated as rituals rather than activities. Fieldbar invites people to experience the outdoors with intention, believing it is most enjoyable when approached with elegance, style, and grace.
Fieldbar: Designed to Last
The brand embraces a return to quality, where people value longevity as a modern form of luxury. Instead of replacing an entire cooler box when wear appears, the brand designs each component so makers can produce and fit it separately. Furthermore, this approach allows owners to repair or replace individual parts over time rather than discard the whole product. By encouraging customers to buy once and buy well, Fieldbar pushes back against fast consumption and waste. Through products designed for care and longevity, Fieldbar supports a more thoughtful model of sustainability.
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Leah Ermann is a South African Fashion Business student whose identity and vision are deeply rooted in the landscapes, cultures, and contradictions of her home country. Growing up in South Africa meant being constantly aware of extremes. These realities shaped her sensitivity to the world around her and challenged her understanding of fashion as something far beyond surface-level beauty. In a place where many people are fortunate simply to own a pair of shoes, Leah learned early on that clothing carries meaning, privilege, and responsibility.
Alongside this awareness grew a profound connection to nature and conservation, spending a lot of time in the bush deepened her understanding of the impact humans have on endangered wildlife and fragile ecosystems. Leah sees fashion as a silent but powerful language, a way to express identity, values, and cultural stories without words.
She is driven by a desire to explore the deeper meanings behind collections, to learn from new cultures, and to use fashion as a platform to amplify South African creativity, resilience, and humanity. Ultimately, her goal is to create work that not only reflects where she comes from whilst learning about other cultures, but also contributes to change, honoring both people and the natural world that shaped her.
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