Login
Fleece in the form most people recognise today is a relatively recent invention. Through much of the 1970s, climbers still relied heavily on wool, cotton and down. Patagonia began experimenting with synthetic pile during that decade, searching for something warm, lightweight and quick to dry.
“It’s not so much that anything was wrong with wool, but I think Yvon was just looking to make a garment that would dry more quickly and be lighter weight than wool while providing the same, or better warmth,” explains Patagonia’s Mark Little.
Pre-fleece Yvon Chouinard, angry at the lack of lightweight synthetic wool alternatives.
One of the starting points came from the synthetic pile clothing already being worn in cold, wet conditions. Helly Hansen had introduced Fiberpile in 1961, a thick synthetic pile mid-layer which kept insulating when wet. It worked, but early pile could be bulky, clumpy and prone to pilling.
Meanwhile, in Massachusetts, textile company Malden Mills had been working with polyester pile fabrics. Patagonia began working with the mill to turn that rough early material into a softer, lighter fabric better suited to outdoor clothing.
An old advert featuring some early, chunky Patagonia fleece action.
First came a chunky fabric called Bunting. That work developed into the softer double-faced fleece Patagonia called Synchilla, with synthetic fleece appearing at the start of the 1980s. Then, in 1985, the Synchilla Snap-T Pullover made its debut.
“Synchilla was the next generation of our ‘Bunting’ family which sold gangbusters in the early 80s. The goal was to make a garment that would dry quick, be light weight and give you the most warmth. What made it unique was that the ‘fur’ was an uneven fiber (unlike pile fleece). The unevenness trapped heat better, by warming the air in between the negative space, it also kept the fleece from pilling,” explained Mark.
As well as the new fabric, the stripped-back design of the pullover was unusual too. Cyndi Davis, who worked on the Snap-T with Yvon, explained: “Part of the goal was to be light, so we ditched the zipper and designed the nylon snap front, saving a lot of weight. We also wanted it to dry quick, so we found swimwear fabric to create minimal binding on the cuffs that would have some elasticity. We also ditched the hand pockets since it would be used as a layering piece and only made the concession to put a small chest pocket on there to keep something small.”
Assorted fleece-wear.
Here’s what a 1985 Patagonia catalogue had to say on the subject: “We took it on a forty-day kayaking trip to South America, used it all fall fly fishing in Wyoming and Montana and then took it on a trip to Nepal, where every day for 21 days we put on our jackets in the morning, wrapped them around our waists at midday, and used them as pillows at night. We even washed them in a yak watering bucket with Chinese lye soap so strong it faded the freckles on our hands and mangled our sweatpants. Back in the Maytags in our R&D department they were laundered and dried repeatedly, and in the end the material still looked great. It never shrank, pilled or pulled out of shape.”
These things sold plenty, and soon brightly coloured fleeces could be spotted at climbing walls and camping barns across the land. In 1987 Patagonia published an essay called The Question of Color, explaining their heavy use of purple. “According to a study, people who liked purple had a strong need for new experiences and a higher percentage of them had gone skiing in the last year.”
A bold fleece wearer.
Patagonia pushed the idea further in 1993, when it introduced fleece made from post-consumer recycled plastic soda bottles. The bottles were cleaned, processed into polyester and spun into fibre that could be used again for clothing. Patagonia was the first outdoor clothing manufacturer to make fleece this way.
As Mark explained at the time: “The fiber was made from bottles, turned to pellets then spun into fiber. For our current fabric, the bottles are collected through an agency, cleaned, and then bought by the yarn supplier who turns them into chip or flake for extrusion into filament yarn. The quality of recycled polyester is, in most cases, indistinguishable from virgin polyester. Anywhere between 29 to 35 bottles are used to make a single garment.”
Fleece is everywhere now, but Patagonia had a sizeable hand in turning synthetic pile from practical outdoor insulation into something people wanted to wear away from a mountain as well.
Oi Polloi co-founder Nigel Lawson put the appeal into words: “I suppose it’s sort of halfway between a hippy and a rock climber. It sits in both camps. It’s kind of a hippy aesthetic, but it comes from the outdoors. Yeah, it’s a bit gaudy, but it’s fucking cool. It’s an original.”
Thanks to everyone at Patagonia for their help with this.
