Gear: Chapter 6

The Rise of Gorpcore

Just a little heads up - just before the last chapter of the series drops, I’ll be in conversation with the esteemed Jad Abumrad at Ludlow House on December 1st. Tickets are free but seats are limited!

I’ll start with this picture I took at Functional Fabric Fair: the market place where both outdoor brands and the department of defense go shopping for the newest, latest, most cutting-edge textiles.

This is where it all begins. These mills come up with new chemical treatment, new twists of yarn, new ways to make cloth perform.

The outdoor brand’s job is to buy that performance cloth and add style and marketing. So…. what makes an outdoor company so different from a fashion company anymore?

Ok. This is when. Finally, at long last, we talk about GORPCORE.

There it is. That’s the article that created “Gorpcore”

What is Gorpcore? It is outdoorsy fashion. It is crunchy made cool. Most perfectly exemplified by the collaboration that Gucci did with The North Face:

Or the collaboration that Dior did with Birkenstock

Or Proenza Schouler with with Sorel.

The list goes on and on and on and on. There are so many upscale fashion brands that decided to collaborate with granola-y outdoorsy brands. But what happened in 2017 that lead writer Jason Chen to coin this new term “Gorpcore?”

I mean, streetwear had already taken a liking to outdoorsy clothes and Biggie Smalls was wearing North Face Nuptse jackets in the 1990s. What was so new and different in 2017?

I have two little theories. I don’t want to get into them too deeply here (please listen to my podcast).

But I think they have to do with

1. A continuing revolution in modern sizing and fit. In both the outdoor industry and the military.

2. A trend for tactical outdoor clothing that was made for special operators. Most famously exemplified by Drake and Virgil Abloh’s matching Arc’teryx multicam jackets at New York Fashion Week.

It wasn’t just a few celebrities here and there. Tactical clothes truly became grails, right around the time gorpcore was coined. And since then, the trend for special forces fashion has only grown.

Fashion and military also continue to be interconnected. Like our military layperson expert Joshua Kerner stopped in his tracks when he saw this American Eagle bomber jacket. He texted me “It’s not just an homage to a bomber jacket (extremely standard) but to a rare unique variant only produced in San Francisco in the late 1930s.”

But hey hey ok I’ve already said too much here!!! That’s it that’s it!

This is a short substack this time because I am very tired… but thank you all so much for reading and for listening and all your support. I feel like I’m running the final stretch of a marathon. I’ve been so completely chuffed by the attention the show has gotten from the likes of GQ, Elle, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Times, Glamour, The Observer, Atmos, and Harper’s Bazaar, as well as anyone and everyone who has helped spread the word. It means a lot.