In search of reinvention, fashion takes a hike
As we seek comfort in the great outdoors, fashion is following suit
To me, hiking seems like one of those impressive activities (like reading Ovid or making your own pizza dough) that we do largely to be able to say we’ve done it. Hiking is simply walking, dramatized. It is strolling with some added elevation, the absence of society and the faint threat of bears. Is it even hiking we enjoy or having hiked?
With our cities locked down, bars and restaurants shut and trips abroad reduced to fantasy, the allure of the forest has never been stronger. Even skeptics like me have had to reconsider our aversion to nature.
A quick fix for the isolation we feel in our homes is the isolation of a trail. That the Ontario Parks website crashed when the provincial government allowed backcountry camping this summer is proof that I am far from alone in this thinking. Hiking also overlaps nicely with birdwatching, another plein air activity that’s enjoying a surge in popularity.
Afew weeks ago, my boyfriend (he’s outdoorsy) and I drove to the Algonquin Highlands to tackle a trail that wound though meadow and brush, river and hills. Aside from quieting my frazzled brain, the hike provided another welcome opportunity: getting dressed with some purpose.
As someone who relishes the act of matching clothes to occasion, I trawled my closet for something suitable for a mosquito-ridden trail. Novelly, I wasn’t looking at my clothes though a purely esthetic lens. Practicality was the only demand of the day: leggings to cover my ankles from bug bites, a hat to shield my face from the sun, layers to address the fickle weather and, finally, a waterproof topper (because of course it would rain on the one day in my life I volunteer to hike). I looked like I raided the clearance section at Bass Pro Shops. I wasn’t quite dressing for myself or (as I’d done pre-pandemic) for others. A true new reality.
Right now, the fashion industry is undergoing the greatest tonal shift in decades. High and low, brands are adapting. Gucci and Michael Kors have announced new, season-agnostic collection schedules. Zara is closing thousands of stores and investing more than a billion dollars to prop up its e-commerce. Many are reckoning with long-standing issues of exclusion, inequality and outright racism, and trying to make amends for decades of entrenched disparities that they helped deepen. Sure, a frilly dress is a nice pick-me-up, but at what point do we demand more from fashion and at what point does fashion acknowledge this sea change?
This will hardly be the first time that the industry responds to the mood at large. Fashion has often found influence in other spheres — Coco Chanel’s breakthrough jersey dresses sparked a fruitful relationship between style and sport. The military has lent all of its sartorial tropes to the runways. Skateboard culture informed fashion for the past three decades. And let’s not get started on art. This is how trends are born.
Is hiking, and our embrace of the outdoors, next? It has already begun. Look no further than the new-found It status of formerly uncool, outdoorsy items like Teva sandals, Merrell hiking boots and fishing vests.
The 62-year-old Japanese gear brand Snow Peak is gaining a worldwide following thanks to its sleek product offering and promise to “create restorative experiences in nature.” A wander through Canadian outerwear store MEC’s racks reveals a product offering that spans Patagonia fleece pullovers and trail packs in delightfully ’80s shades.
If clothes used to sell us a bourgeois illusion, now they will peddle virtues of performance and preparedness, preferably wrapped up in an ecoconscious package. The pandemic descended during an awkward in-between time for fashion. The Fall 2020 collections had paraded down the runways in New York, London, Milan and Paris just as lockdowns and travel warnings started to escalate. Though we know what kinds of items designers and brands want to sell us in the next season (these include earthytoned suiting and dresses adorned with long, swingy fringe) the question is: Will we even want them?
Still, a few designers seem to have made some good bets. At his show, Rick Owens draped models in capes that resembled unzipped sleeping bags. Sacai designer Chitose Abe sent down a deconstructed flight suit made of techy looking nylon and adorned with zippered pockets. Rag & Bone’s mix included quilted ponchos that resembled my boyfriend’s waterproof one by Helikon-Tex, a Polish outdoor gear brand.
My own hiking outfit included a thin, waterproof jacket from a collection made in collaboration between Lululemon and the London designer Roksanda Ilincic that came out at the start of this year. When I first tried it on, months ago, I didn’t appreciate its deeply functional design. On the trail, details that once seemed like pretty frills turned out to be much more. The ruffled cuffs helped to shield my hands from mosquitoes, the kangaroo pocket held my phone securely; the hood, which I cinched tightly with a bungee cord to protect my forehead from — again — mosquitoes, proved indispensable. Extolling these features, which were clearly designed for more than just a coffee run, seems almost naive to me now.
There is no doubt that those of us in a privileged enough position are in the process of reorienting our relationships with stuff. We’re vowing to buy better, buy less, buy local. Fashion has always been a form of escapism — but now, this term has a new, literal meaning.
Though flawed, fashion has always walked in step with the zeitgeist. In her 1928 novel “Orlando,” Virginia Woolf proffers a defence of clothes. “Vain trifles as they seem, clothes have, they say, more important offices than merely to keep us warm,” she writes. “They change our view of the world and our world’s view of us.” In fact, it is the world that’s changing and our clothes are rushing to catch up.