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The Patagonia Archives are tucked away behind a generic storefront somewhere in Ventura, California. Until you walk through the doors and glimpse a slice of warehouse, you don’t realize you’re in proximity of a semi-secret stash of some of the coolest, rarest gear in the world. The 10,000 square-foot space is filled with vintage Patagonia products—thousands of them—as well as countless photographs, catalogues, letters, and other ephemera from the brand’s 43-year-old history. And the newly-accumulated collection has come together at the right time. Fashion is going through a major heritage obsession as people gravitate toward brands with history and authenticity—for some people, wearing the right vintage Patagonia fleece is just as cool as wearing the latest piece off the Gucci runway.
But it’s not just the heritage factor. Fashion is obsessed with Patagonia itself—the new garms and the company’s ethos of social and environmental activism. As the industry starts to seriously grapple with the environmental and human implications of clothing production, Patagonia’s story resonates more than ever among fashion insiders and un-crunchy urbanites. Designer Brendon Babenzien of Noah closed his store last Black Friday, pointing people instead toward Patagonia’s radical “100% For The Planet” sale (where all their sales—all $10 million—went to grassroots environmental nonprofits). Folks are wearing their support on their sleeves too: White-hot designer Virgil Abloh proudly sports Patagonia logo T-shirts, and this summer NYC was practically overrun by the company’s iconic 5" Baggies shorts. Turns out sticking to you guns rather than chasing the trend du jour pays off.
At the heart of the Patagonia narrative is its nearly mythic founder Yvon Chouinard, a 78-year-old ascetic sportsman who started a backyard blacksmithing operation in the late-1950s in order to support his climbing and surfing expeditions. Patagonia grew out of this climbing hardware business, and has become a billion-dollar company all while preaching radical corporate responsibility, holding itself to the highest environmental standards in the industry, and wading into various political battles along the way. The paradox of Patagonia is that Chouinard built a booming business on a message of anti-consumption. (Remember Patagonia’s “Don’t Buy This Jacket” New York Times ad?)
The history of Chouinard’s nonconformism is housed in the Patagonia Archives, launched by longtime employees Val Franco and Terri Laine in 2015. They have decades of institutional knowledge between them—Franco actually lived the history of Patagonia since the beginning, joining its precursor, Chouinard Equipment, in 1973 to sew the soft goods that would be spun off as Patagonia. Since there had been no prior effort to systematically organize and archive Patagonia’s history, Franco and Laine put the call out to past and present employees and friends of the brand to send their well-worn gear “home.” It’s all about “connecting with people and honoring what they did for us in the past,” says Franco. “Then things just arrive.” They’ve now accumulated two shipping containers and countless boxes filled with garments and gear from 1943-the present, from Chouinard Equipment ice picks and glacier glasses to the short-lived “Reef Walker” water shoes from the mid-’80s to climbing gear that’s been up and down El Capitan.
Franco has also been preserving institutional knowledge through oral histories from the early characters that helped define Patagonia, which is used to onboard new employees and steep them in the unorthodox company culture. Besides employees, few have seen the Archives, and there are no plans to open it for public appointments—though Franco and Laine hope to draw on their resources to open a museum space in the Ventura retail store. “I see it as an archive and resource to the employees and innovators of the company, and to collect and protect the history,” says Franco. “Big inspiration goes to the designers of the company.” To learn more about how Patagonia’s design team translates the vintage vibe into modern product, and how their futurist founder feels about all the nostalgia floating around, I sat down with senior designer John Rapp, marketing manager of fish and Workwear Chris Gaggia, and director of Workwear Ed Auman to talk about Patagonia’s latest launch.
GQ Style: It seems like some sort of “Patagonia vintage” line would be a slam dunk. Why not reissue from the Archives every season?
Chris Gaggia: Yvon is definitely not a nostalgia buff. He has no room for nostalgia.
John Rapp: The opposite! I think it’s really safe to say that a full vintage line of Patagonia would do incredibly. But that’s not at all what we’re interested in doing. Its about making things better with a smaller footprint, with Fair Trade certification, with more clean fabric—learning from what we’ve done in the last 40 years, and what people have done for the last 200 years. We had one exception for our 40-year anniversary where we did a small collection, a legacy line, but we held it to real high environmental standards, changed the fit and fabric and footprint. But it was funny, for the Chouinards that wasn’t the dream. We did this one presentation where we pulled out all these golden era photos of Steve McQueen, when he was living out here in Santa Paula and had his own plane and was totally over Hollywood. And he was wearing ranch wear from Central California and we were like, Yvon, look at this! And he was like, What’re you looking at that for? That’s the past, we’re moving forward. It was a really good reminder of his motto in product, which is find the best and make it a little bit better.
CG: That was one of the considerations when we were rolling out the Workwear line in particular. It would be easy to delve into the past and leverage the Tin Shed imagery and all of that stuff to the nth degree. I mean, people love it. We nod to it, but we don’t rely on that nostalgia driven thing. Hey, this is futuristic! The Iron Forge Hemp canvas we use in Workwear—Yvon has become deeply interested in regenerative agriculture as a legitimate part of solving or forestalling climate change. Yvon, as old school as he can be, that dude is a futurist! And one of the ideas behind Workwear is that we’re a company that for 40 years has spent its time basically celebrating all this stuff that is more or less an avoidance of work, so maybe it was time to grow up and get a job. [laughs.]
JR: If there’s one place where we have deeply leveraged the Archives, it’s seeing what the best stuff is that we’ve done so far. We’re really comfortable borrowing from the past to move forward. We wouldn’t say, Hey let’s do that jacket as-is, because back then we couldn’t afford the right length zipper and couldn’t get the minimums for colors. But let’s say a napoleon pocket makes a ton of sense, let’s borrow that. That’s been a really incredible resource for us here. And there’s absolutely a DNA of Patagonia and it’s very transparent in our product. We’re not hiding. There’s not a lot of covert things where you’d put a windflap over and go, Whoa there’s a magnet under there! Our design is very overt, whether it’s board short or a work jacket. It’s really built for function, and that is the aesthetic. There is no fashion to a wetsuit if it’s not keeping you warm. It’s just totally landfill. And some companies think otherwise.
Did you guys spend a lot of time in the Archives to design and develop Workwear?
JR: Tons, we spent tons of time in here, tons of time in the field, and tons of time looking at garments, like the first products we ever had in software. Which were these double-knee steel working pants that Yvon found because he was doing so much iron work, and then an incredibly durable rugby he used for climbing—not a fancy polo shirt to look nice.
The colors of the ’70s rugbys back there are incredibly striking.
JR: The colors in the rugbys are so neat—that was a time when a lot of outdoor stuff was coming out of military, so there was a lot of greens and browns. And Yvon was like, Hey, if I’m going to be stuck somewhere for six days lets have some levity and some color. And also we’re playing outdoors! We’re not trying to stake out and get another group of humans, we’re playing out there, let’s have some irreverence with it, let’s not take ourselves too seriously. And I think he set the tone really well for the organization with that. It’s serious play, but it is about play and enjoying the spaces we have and the people we get to do it with, and that’s carried over through the years.
CG: Early on with Workwear, we wanted to portray this celebratory nature of work. This isn’t the work that crushes you, this isn’t man vs. nature. The reason we’re drawn to sport is because as people we’ve sort of been removed from the true necessity of doing hard work and having those hardships, so we invent these hardships in elaborate games of climbing and skiing and trail running. And that ultimately is a replacement experience for the cycle of hardship, and celebration, you would have as people who truly need to labor to make their living. We’re building for that functionality and building out of this historical perspective. Patagonia has always celebrated work in their catalogues throughout their history.
Ed Auman: What’s interesting is I’ve been asked multiple times since we launched this what right we have to be in Workwear. I’ve been receiving a Patagonia catalogue since the ’70s. I’d love to find out how many images of people working in Patagonia clothing that has existed in the catalogue over those 43 years—it would be hundreds of hundreds. And I look at the old poly cardigan fleece—that was the greatest abrasion-resistant fleece jacket on the planet. And we totally riffed on that style and redeveloped the fabric for it. When I sat in the room two-and-a-half years ago talking Workwear with Yvon, I threw down the old black-and-white photo of the Tin Shed. And he said, If we’re going to do this, we’ve got to be able to develop the strongest natural canvas work cloth in the industry. And then he said, In order to do that, we’ve got to have hemp.
JR: Such a neat idea.
EA: So now we’ve got a product with the unique, incredible properties of industrial hemp, both environmental and abrasion-wise. And in the back of our head as we developed it, we knew darn well we’d have a hardcore Patagonia customer that’s going to buy that pant to go out and climb a big wall in.
One things that I’ve noticed is that the Archives really sum up the philosophy and sort of democratic nature of Patagonia. And it’s a really cool snapshot in that it includes the false starts along with the major milestones.
JR: Lots of them, for sure. It’s really fun that that’s celebrated in here. There are some pieces like, Holy crap we did that! I do think some of the popularity that you’re seeing in a place like NYC, and we have it here, is that you can see somebody across the farmer’s market and see somebody in a Patagonia and be like, Hey, we share something. And it for sure doesn’t mean they’re pinnacle in their sport. They might be very deep into nonfiction. Maybe it’s growing heirloom tomatoes—it’s about somebody who gets the process of doing things right. And I think that’s a seductive message that people are waking up to and wanting and craving. And Yvon’s so spot on, doing a pure vintage line, we’ve all seen that and it’s like, Oh, that’s the demise. Now they’re just a fashion company. Even if they came from a really incredible running culture or outdoor culture, they set themselves up for being inauthentic.
CG: Once the fad is over, when you embrace that, your appeal is surface fashion. You’ve knocked your own legs out from under you. And then as soon as you’ve puked out everything you’ve ever eaten, you’re done. What’s next, a Ford Explorer?
Why do you think people hang on to their Patagonia gear for so long?
JR: I think it comes back to the way we design it. All of our favorite clothes are the ones that fit the best. I know there are some exceptions in high fashion, but if it’s a daily driver we always gravitate toward the same clothes. We always ask our fit model: Hey how does it feel? I think it’s that and then recognizing what we stand for. People really gravitate toward that.
CG: I wore my first Chouinard Equipment climbing T-shirt until it was absolutely threadbare, and then I stopped because I wanted to keep it. And it’s funny, I really would love to have Yvon sign that shirt for me, because I’d been climbing for a while, and only after I went on my first road trip to Joshua Tree and made it back did I feel like I could buy a Chouinard T-shirt. But I keep thinking he’ll look at me and be like, Why do you have this old rag? [laughs.] But you feel a certain amount of life force in it. You end up repairing it and holding onto it and it does become magic somehow. And that’s always been part of imagery in our catalogues, is showing people with blasted gear on that they slap the patch over. That’s just pure old-school functionality. Slap the patch on it. What’s it going to hurt, your social status?
As longtime customers and fans, and now designers, what has it been like seeing the progression of Patagonia over the last 40-plus years?
JR: I grew up in Santa Barbara and was interested in Patagonia my whole life, and have been designing clothes here for 19 years. I think it’s really unusual for something to evolve while staying the same. It’s a family run business, and that’s really unusual for a business this size. An amazing example was Black Friday this past year, when the organization—by which I mean eight of us sitting down—said this is the right thing to do, to donate all our Black Friday profits. We’re so proud of it, truly putting our money and our reputation where our mouth is. A lot of companies would have to get the bean counters out and think about it for three years.
CG: And then at the end of three years they would tell you what you know they’re going to tell you! I mean, look at all the companies that don’t participate in 1% For The Planet. I mean, 1% of your gross revenue is actually a significant number, and people are like, Are you insane? I think that’s why people are drawn here to work and as customers. I remember the very first catalogue essay that I cut out and saved was from one of the late-’80s catalogues. It said, “Reality Check: Everything We Make Pollutes.” And I remember going, What the hell? What is this company doing?
JR: That’s a huge part, if we can inspire. We get inspiration from everywhere, and that should just be open source forever. That transparency is another component of Yvon.
CG: This is one of my favorite Yvon quotes—we were talking about waterproof breathable technology in rain jackets, and Yvon goes, What’s wrong with being a little wet sometimes? And that’s the thing, the Houdini jacket is not a waterproof jacket, it’s not 100% windproof—or at least the early iterations that I use. It was just enough to get you home, to keep you just warm enough while you’re running your ass off through a storm in the mountains. It doesn’t protect you from the experience, it lets you have the experience. You’re not all dry and hermetically sealed. Because what kind of life is that? There’s room for the variables and the chaos and everything. Which is why it’s great to have the burn hole in your jacket or the tear you patch over. You’re like, Remember when that happened? Remember when I got sucked up into the vent? [laughs.]
JR: That’s why it becomes a favorite.
Raf Simons will have you lining up down the block of the Calvin Klein flagship store.
