Now that Classpass-ready athleisure has sunken its spandex and sneakers into every element of modern dressing, fashion waves are starting to be made by clothes informed by more extreme, if not exposed forms of movement: less pilates, more mountaineering, fishing, skiing, and camping.
Moving beyond track stripes and other obvious athletic elements, designers are zeroing their focus on hiking straps, reflective tape, and utility pockets—details you’d more likely come across at your local outdoor good store than fashion boutique. Sartorial values once preached The Good Word of comfort; now, they’re in full tilt toward roughing it. In other words: “Gorpcore” is not a trend to sleep on.
PHOTO: Christian Vierig
North Face jackets spotted during Fashion Week.
PHOTO: Melodie Jeng
PHOTO: Christian Vierig
The function-first origins of these high-performance materials stem from the normcore crowd. Once they abandoned the dad gear, they gravitated towards slightly more element-braving garb. Designers followed suit, collaborating with outdoor brands more closely associated with catalogues than fashion spreads—Columbia (Opening Ceremony), the North Face (Sacai and Supreme), Moncler (the Genius Collection) and, most recently, Fjallraven (Acne Studios). And with every experiment in Gore-Tex and neoprene since, they’ve become emboldened to incorporate survivalist accents into their collections.
The shift towards gorpcore isn’t simply a fleeting fashion trend—rather, it’s representative of a market-wide phenomenon that has its roots in the outdoor space.
According to the Outdoor Industry Association, outdoor recreation accounts for $887 billion in annual spending in the United States, accounting for 2.2% of the GDP. “The outdoor recreation economy is growing faster than the economy as a whole,” says Marisa Nicholson, vice president and show director of Outdoor Retailer, the stalwart industry quarterly convention and conference. The fastest-growing demographic within that market is women’s, she adds.
PHOTO: Ignacio Torres
Looks from Opening Ceremony x Columbia’s Fall 2018 collection.
PHOTO: Ignacio Torres
Through Instagram groups and hashtags, and a dizzying number of outdoor retreats, women in the outdoors have more visibility than ever before, making up 46% of all outdoor participants. But performance-based brands were slow on the uptake: “The fashion world was cannibalizing us,” says Nicholson. The approach to selling to female consumers the normally brown and beige utilitarian garb, she recounts, was to “shrink it and pink it.” Not ideal.
To close this gap, the outdoor industry started to bringing more women to the table, particularly in executive positions, making room in the C suites at Merrell, Burton, and REI. And companies began seeing a return: After CEO Rose Marcario joined Patagonia (originally as its CFO), sales tripled. Put simply, “women working in those leadership teams helps products become better for women,” Nicholson says.
PHOTO: Dvora/REX/Shutterstock
A guest wears a Patagonia jacket during Haute Couture Fashion Week.
The fashion world, meanwhile, was in a state of flux. The element of surprise that was so ingrained in the runway show experience had disappeared. Yet another permutation of sleeve and sparkle felt passé. So, in an effort to revive that sense of wonder, designers began turning to the most ordinary, ubiquitous wardrobe elements and making them extraordinary. Demna Gvasalia did that with T-shirts bearing the logo of shipping company DHL. Sandy Liang, meanwhile, looked to tech fleece on the sales rack at Modell’s.
“I wore a zip-up fleece because it was a hand-me-down from my brother. I didn’t like it. It was not cool or interesting,” remembers Liang of her childhood outerwear. “But by changing a trim or elevating another detail, you can make what was once an afterthought a showpiece.”
PHOTO: Courtesy of Sandy Liang.
Fleece looks from Sandy Liang’s Spring 2019 collection.
PHOTO: Courtesy of Sandy Liang.
PHOTO: Courtesy of Sandy Liang.
And that’s exactly what she has done: Liang’s Patagonia-but-make-it-Fashion jackets have become staples in the wardrobes of every cool person from Instagram, selling at a cool $400 more than its ski shop counterparts—same goes for the mylar survival blankets turned open-back dresses at Raf Simons’ Calvin Klein, Prada’s above the knee all-weather rubber Wellington boot, and Kim Jones’ final Louis Vuitton menswear collection with its rainproof monogrammed coats.
“A fleece is classic in it’s own way. It’s never gone out of style. It never really changes, it’s constant,” says Liang. “The people who appreciate it always appreciate it.”
California-based designer Jesse Kamm was trusting similar instincts while creating her most recent fall collection, which is inspired by the camping lifestyle documented in the movie Valley Uprising. “I was thinking about the girl I want to be—camping on the weekend, pulling up in the parking lot on Monday morning in a good-looking jumpsuit and a little dirt under your fingernails,” she says. “Instead of hanging out, consuming new goods, I’m going to get into nature.”
The resulting ready-to-wear-and-tear knits, jumpsuits, and overalls struck a chord with her cultish clientele (Think L.A. creatives.) Through this tumultuous period of political and social movements, there’s not really a place for sexy, delicate clothing in Kamm’s brand. “How can I build clothes that feel right in this environment? I’m not making silk dresses to wear to the club,” the designer says with a laugh, revealing the real luxury of every protection-against-the-elements, handbag-free, utilitarian-pocketed piece popping up in Dover Street Markets and REIs near you.
These are clothes that women can literally do anything in and survive anything in. At the moment, what could be more stylish?
