Buyers Remorse

I was going out the door this morning, a rare sunny one, gathering up all the bits I need to sit and write, as well as my son, for dropping off a crèche. We cycle into the village, and being early, I needed a coat. We have a lot of coats, our hallway looking like a nightclub cloakroom or a room for dressing up, coats for North Sea fishermen, Kiwi farmers, Polar explorers, and every weight in between, all staggered, one behind the other on six iron hooks. I flicked through a selection: too warm, too small, too heavy, too thin, until I found one that was in the coat Goldilocks zone, unhooked it and put it on. Out the door, we went.

For a long time, my business was selling coats, testing them, modeling them (Leo Houlding could make Berghaus look like Arcterxy, which is why he gets the big bucks, while I made Patagonia look like Regatta, which is why I don’t), and finally helping to design them. I learnt a lot along the way, but one that’s served me well is a scepticism of technology, namely space-age innovations or revolutions in fabric and insulation.

When you work for big brands, every season, you tend to be tied to producing new clothing items built on the next big thing, generally coming from Gore, Polartec, Primaloft, etc. The reason for this is twofold. First, you are offering the customer the newest ‘thing’, with the newest ‘thing’ always being best, better than the old thing, warmer, lighter, more compact, and so better performing than what the customer bought last year, which is now just shit. This is backed up by the money spent on marketing by the material manufacturer, who is promoting their new sExy (TM) fabric everywhere, from outdoor media to the Sunday papers, showing how it was developed for NASA or the Pentagon and guaranteed to be 50% better than what was 50% better last season. The fact everything else is shit is reinforced by all the associated athletes cutting and pasting the same copy into their posts (remember North Face Futurelight, which you’d have thought was the outdoor fabric equivalent of the second coming, rather than just own brand, non-Gore, so cheaper, sweaty plastic). The overall effect is to convince the general public that they stand at the threshold of a performance revolution, and all they need is a debit card to cross it.

In reality, I’m afraid to say, at best, the improvements, in the short term, are always marginal and very often, in the long term, its worst. Why?

I used to live in the seaside town of Bray, Ireland, which was famous for its long Victorian prom. Every day, people would stroll the prom, and at the weekends, it felt as if the whole of Dublin took the sea air. The prom, its ornamental iron railings and seating running the entire length, and stone seating, had a spring clean every ten years, where everything was repainted and made to look almost as good as new, even though it was more than a hundred years old. Then, one year later, they decided to build some flood defences along the river that fed into Bray harbour, and wanting it to fit in with the style of the place, they tried to match the 21st-century work with its 19th-century neighbour. Within a year, and after great cost and overruns, the job was done; the Lord Mayor opened the new section by unveiling a plaque to commemorate a job well done. But within a year, the cracks started to appear, literally, with features like floor lighting breaking down and vents for water to drain from the paths filling up with the pebbles they used instead of flags in order to keep the costs down. Metalwork started to rust, as the wrong fasteners had been used, or became bent or damaged by youths, or the drunks and crack heads who started hanging around the area, in among the once well-kept flower beds (kept long enough for the opening), but now resembled the Mekong Delta. Lastly, the wording on the commemorative plaque was scrawled and spray painted over, and it started to peel off. The moral of this story is that in the past, people built things for future generations, old men planting mighty trees they’d never see, etc., while now, you build things that only have to stay standing long enough for the cheques to be cashed and the company liquidated.

A lot of outdoor fabrics and tech follow this model; they only have to appear to be amazing long enough to avoid buyer's remorse or a couple of wash cycles. It’s not so much about the material reality; it’s more about the promise. It’s like most marketing, and it’s all illusionary. If this new item of clothing, which promised to be a ‘quantum leap’ in performance, was to start 10% better than what you’ve been using for thirty years (10% lighters for the same warmth and more compact, and with cooler colour ways), even though it cost 400% more (think $400 Arcyeryx Gamma hoody replacing that £100 Buffalo Belay jacket you got in 1995), then I guess that might be OK. But in many cases, such tech tends to age badly, it breaks down, it falls apart, it stops functioning, and sometimes, within a season, it’s worse than what you had. Yes, you can lift your X-brand synthetic-filled jacket and demonstrate it packs down into a Coke can. At the same time, the old one was the size of a loaf of bread, but if you hold it up to the light, you’ll find the reason is the filling has proved to be as robust as wet cat hair, and really, your high loft jacket is nothing but two windproof sewn together, sandwiching in man-made fluff and dandruff.

Kifru Lost Park Parka, made with Climeshield Apex, a jacket with all the sex appeal as a school parka, until you’re benighted, when it becomes the hottest thing you’ve got!

I guess we bring all these things on ourselves, really, in that we demand the impossible and are willing to buy big for it, and so, we get what we wish for, not realising it’s like buying fireworks; they’re a one-shot deal when really, we want an RPG7, someone good for total war, and more than on.

And so, as soon as you see in the blurb that X fabric is X times more breathable than Y, or this fill is twice as warm as A, or some NASA jell lining allows you to juggle lava, it might be, in a lab, or for your first few outings, but I can almost promise you high hopes will soon turn to disappointment, or worse, you’ll normalise it. That outdoor gear needs replacing every few seasons once it “stops working” (leaks, isn’t warm anymore, has holes in it).

I guess I should tell you what I think works. Well, everything wears out eventually, especially if you use and abuse it. Still, in terms of insulation, the benchmark for me in insulation is continuous strand fill (Climashield), as this seems to be the only thing that retains its insulation year after year. Yes, it looks crap compared to chopped filament or made to appear 'down like', like making a coat out of settee cushions, but it's very robust, and that's what you want in life support gear, like jackets (light and heavy) and sleeping bags and mittens. Down is also good if you can look after it and stop it from escaping back to nature, as is wool; the coarser, the better (a quality item of wool clothing will last you forever). As for everything else, it's really about the weight of fabrics you use, and sometimes you just have to understand that some items of clothing are semi-disposable.

In contrast, others can last a lifetime (I've got Patagonia industrial strength base layers I've had for 25 years, and they're as good as the day I was given them, and then I've had other, more 'eco' Patagonia base layers, that have fallen to pieces in months). I suppose the key is understanding what you’re buying and using it appropriately. If you buy the lightest gear you can and use it for everything, don’t complain; it wears out fast and needs to be replaced. These days, as I buy my gear, I tend to prefer more industrial-weight gear, the sort of thing a lumberjack, farmer, or tree surgeon might buy, not what Kilian Jornet is given, as I don’t like having to second guess if something still works. It just does. In my ideal world, the people who make this stuff would just make what works and just make minor tweaks year on year, like it used to be, rather than continuously coming out with something new that is really less good than the old, just less boring. There are some outdoor companies like this, but not many.

So, I’m sitting writing this after dropping my son off, and I’m still wearing that jacket I picked up, which at the time was state of the art, with micro baffles filled with some down-like fill that was no down, with stretch fleece panels to aid movement etc (that the wind whips through on your bike). It used to look pretty good when new, great on a hanger, the future, but now it’s full of holes, all patches of gaffer tape, silver, black and green, and the insulation, well, it seems to have a mind of its own these days and does what it wants. Rather than provide uniform insulation, like a boring jacket made from Climashield, with all the sex appeals of a school parka, this insulation has gone on its little baffle adventure. I guess that’s the modern way, but maybe it’s time to drop this into the charity shop and just stick to wearing my 1990s ex-British Antarctic Survey Buffalo jacket, fibre pile and Pertex, instead, an item of clothing that has never had such delusions of grandeur.