Thoughts on the future of outdoor apparel design.
Published on the Re-action Collective website 31st October 2024
I’ve spent the last 20 years of my career designing functional clothing - most of that for the outdoor industry. More recently I've also been working in education; helping up coming generations of designers get to grips with designing for function and purpose.
I’ve learned alot and seen many changes in the outdoor and performance apparel world - and now being involved with the Re-action collective I’ve taken some time to really consider how I want to work and interact with the system, and if it is even a system I really believe in.
Designing gear for the outdoors is different to designing fashion.
But designing kit for outdoor professionals is not the same as designing gear for the general public, and within that ‘generalist’ area there are a myriad of ways to differentiate between different end users.
Many authentic outdoor brands began because an individual wanted to create gear to meet their own specific needs.
It's why some brands are associated with mountains, some with trails, some with travel and some with the ocean. Somewhere along the way I think ‘we’ have lost sight of what's important. Getting caught up in chasing higher performance stats and impressive or novel innovations for the sake of marketing and profit rather than creating product that meets genuine functional needs and really helps a person get out into nature in a safe and comfortable way.
There will always be a need to cater for the the experts,for those professionals who are out (often working) in extreme environments - I see as its own sector
But what if we address the majority user, the more generalist citizen? What if we were to take a different approach to the outdoor clothing we create for them?
What if we asked…
What motivates you to get outdoors?
What is it that you want to experience?
How is it you want or hope to feel
I wonder what garments and products would we end up with and what materials we would choose?
If you live in the UK it’s pretty customary to talk about and complain about the weather, but personally, I actually quite like the weather, and I mean all the weather!
I'm not keen on days on end of howling wind and rain, or dreary grey skies, but with the exception of those conditions that tip into the extreme and the potentially life threatening, I can, for the most part appreciate all the elements.
Like most people I love to feel the warm sun on my skin.
But also I like to immerse myself in cool water.
Sometimes I like to immerse myself in cold water - I love the tingling skin feeling it gives me and how alive that makes me feel, even better if that water is salty!
I also like to feel the breeze, to feel air moving around me.
I really enjoy that feeling of being in open space and leaning into powerful wind and the experience of a blustery coastal path and getting just a bit blown about.
I enjoy running in the rain.
Even more if it’s an out of the blue downpour where you literally have no hope of sheltering or staying dry.
I don’t really mind rain generally - at least not when I’m out in nature I love the smell of a rain soaked forest.
I also like cold crisp air on my face.
Cold, warmth, wind, rain, snow - all of the weathers! Being able to actually experience them all makes me feel alive.
So I wonder why it is that so much of the gear we are sold to help us ‘get outdoors’ is concerned with shielding us from the weather, drastically reducing our experience of it.
In the race to create the kit with the highest of performance and protection levels we’ve found ourselves using a myriad of synthetic materials, chemical treatments and technologies that we now know to actually be harmful to the environment we originally set out to enjoy.
We are also in a situation where people’s expectations of what their clothing can and should do for them have reached considerable heights, and not necessarily linked with any realistic view of how they are used out in the environment or how they could, or should interact with other garments and equipment.
Obviously I don’t want to spend long periods of time being very cold or very soggy, equally I don’t want to be out in blazing heat without protection or shade.
I’m not suggesting for a minute we should all head out to climb Ben Nevis in flip flops and swim shorts in winter, and I’m not saying we should ditch all we know and have created to this point and just start again.
But things are different now, and we shouldn't just do things one way because that's how they’ve always been done!
We know so much more, we have access to a whole host of research and information, we are developing new technologies and have a really extensive selection of materials and potential solutions to explore and use.
So perhaps, moving forward, we can adopt a more realistic view of the levels of activity we will undertake and the weather conditions we’re genuinely likely to experience. Perhaps we can consider how we want to feel in the outdoors and dress accordingly.
Perhaps that will mean that we can and will embrace some of the elements rather than just armouring up against them.