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All right, everybody, wake yourselves up. Get your equipment together. Let's go. Let's move. Noob. Noob. Fallout right now. Platoon at close interval Chapter 6 I couldn't help myself when I was at Natick. I just loved the beautiful leather shearling coat that retired Lt. Col. David Assetta was wearing. This is leather and sheepskin. It was so perfect. It was like the platonic ideal of an authentic military flight jacket. And historically, that was very warm and very durable. And then David Assetta opened the inside of the coat and revealed the label. This is actually stussy. No. Get out. And it wasn't an authentic flight jacket. It was from a streetwear brand. I didn't know who that was until my son was looking at the jacket, and he told me, and he said, is that stussy? And I said, what's stussy? This is a very valuable jacket, actually. I want David's jacket so badly. It's so great. But that's so funny, right? The fashion interpretation of military was good enough for an actual veteran who works on a military base to wear at work. The military and fashion are intertwined in the United States of America. The military and fashion designers have been locked in this ongoing embrace throughout the 20th century, ever since that moment when civilian fashion designers started adapting the patterns of the M43 jacket that they helped make. And similarly, fashion has also had a relationship with that other ongoing American trend where Americans have always wanted to look more rugged, more outdoorsy than they actually are. And while this has been true since the days of the buckskin suit, in recent times, as we increasingly wear arcterics to go buy eggs, there has emerged a cheeky, nifty little name for this phenomenon. Did you invent the word gorpcore? I did invent the word gorpcore. This is J. Chen. He was a writer at New York magazine in 2017 when he coined the word gorp core. I think that gorpcore is adopting the apparel that is commonly associated with outdoor activities. Parkas, puffers, hiking sandals, hiking gear, and wearing it in an urban context. And it was kind of ugly, but cool looking and also a little bit fashion. Okay, what about it was new in 2017. What made the scorpcore movement feel so different? Because, you know, like, Biggie Smalls rapped about north faces in the 90s. Take her Gucci back and her north face off her back. It's like people have been wearing this stuff for a hot minute. Totally. Yeah, exactly what you're saying had been happening. But I think, like, a generation or two generations prior. And I think at that moment, it felt very different. So it's been made a little bit chicer. It's maybe made a little bit more streamlined. It's maybe crafted in better materials, maybe even more technical materials, but in cooler colors. Celebrities were wearing outdoor clothes to fashion week, to premieres. High fashion designers were putting their spins on what looked like camping gear. And it really did feel important in such a New York mag ism, to have to coin it in some way to explain the name that Jason came up with. GORP is an acronym for good old raisins and peanuts trail mix. Basically having grown up in Southern California and not necessarily been a hiker myself, but I did eat gorp, so that was a language I could speak. And then if you add the core suffix, it turns it into an aesthetic norm. Core was born. And so now you have dadcore and clown core. Clown core. 100%. Just anything core goes. So Jason published this piece that's a little sassy, but also quite serious that gorpcore is a phenomenon. It just kind of went out there, and some of my friends read it and thought, oh, fun. I read that thing you wrote. At the end of the year, I found out that it was, like, nominated for the Oxford English Dictionary, like, word of the year, which was hilarious. It lost. It didn't. It didn't actually win. But once the style was named, it really took off. On my way here, I saw so many Solomons. I saw a girl jog by those, like, intense shades, you know, like the Oakleys. Yeah, yeah. Like mirrored visor Oakleys and then, like, a North Face fleece. This is fashion writer and observer Emilia Petrarca. We were standing on the street in soho. It isn't just me, right? Like, this has turned into, like, Gorp corridor. Oh, yeah, 100. I mean. You mean like this? Like Soho. I feel like we're here at a very interesting time with this building. Amelia and I were in front of the soho rei, which has been on the corner of Houston and Lafayette since 2011, and it just announced it's closing next year. But I don't think that means it's the death of gorpcore. I think it's a sign that REI has a lot of competition here. They're just doing what they do, which is sell you, like, normal, nice sneakers. But the fashion consumer is not coming here. Yeah, right there. All around REI were so many other places to buy outdoor clothes. Like, look, I can see Carhartt. Like, there it is. I'm looking at it. It's true. Actually, that wasn't even a Carhartt. It's a Carhartt work in progress, which is an upscale take on workwear by a European company that licensed Carhartt's name. And, like, there's an arc' Teryx down that way. Yes, arc' Teryx and the North Face are a block over Patagonia's over on Crosby street, and those are just the overtly outdoor Z ish brands. Nearby, Zara and Uniqlo and Everlane also sell puffer coats and leggings. And down the block, free people just started their whole line of activewear, which REI even sells. Soho did become gorped. Soho got gorped. Do you know when this happened? I think it was like pre pandemic, and then the pandemic, it just explained, exploded. In 2020, Gucci and the North Face released a collaboration featuring heavy duty puffer coats with interlocking GS. Dior collaborated with Birkenstock Reformation with Canada Goose. In 2024, Sorrel collaborated with Pronza Schuller, and models wore these rain boots for the Spring Summer 2025 show. More and more partnerships are emerging between fashion designers and, like, dorky, crunchy brands every year. And some of the original pioneering outdoor brands sat up and noticed we'd been doing a project with the archive at Eddie Bauer. That's Kyle Fitzgibbons, our designer at Buck Mason, who we talked to at the very start of the series in the room full of military surplus. And some of the surplus in that room had been designed by Eddie Bauer. Eddie Bauer was a manufacturer for the US Air Force and made military garments as well. As in 2023, Buck Mason did a collaboration where they made their version of vintage Eddie Bauer clothes. It's called a Skyliner. Eddie Bauer Skyliner. Kyle held up a down parka and showed me how they essentially made a replica of an original Eddie Bauer Skyliner jacket. And this, for the most part, stitch for stitch, is made in the way that the original piece was made. According to Eddie Bauer designer Anya Gorman. Eddie Bauer liked the Buck Mason collaboration so much, they're actually incorporating some of it into Eddie Bauer's normal clothing. What Buck Mason did was relatively authentic to our heritage. Will it be labeled a collab or. It's just. It's just going to be Eddie Bauer. But it was inspired by that. It was inspired by that. It's like Buck Mason knew Eddie Bauer's roots better than Eddie Bauer did. It took collaborating with a fashion brand to remind the outdoor brand how tough they used to be. We felt that the fabric that they chose was like 10 degrees more rugged than what we usually use. So we went to one that's like five degrees more rugged. It still feels very new for us. Outdoor companies and fashion companies are like converging. It's getting harder and harder to tell what aspects of gear are just for fashion and what are actually for function. Especially now that looking functional is fashionable. And maybe this is part of why, to Jason's extreme surprise, this word he created has stuck around. I feel like it has had more resonance than it ever had when I first wrote about it. It really just has not gone away. And you can't really choose your legacy, I guess. And I personally, me, the humble podcaster Avery Trufelman, have two theories of why gorpcore this recent movement came about in the first place and why it feels different. And I think it's because of two pretty new and two pretty, pretty specific elements that resulted from the cross pollination of fashion, military and the outdoor industry. Hear me out after the break. I was just telling a group of people about Radiotopia the other day and I almost started crying. Radiotopia is how I'm able to make this show. Radiotopia is a podcast distribution network. What that means is that this is how the show makes money. This is how I eat and pay my rent. Radiotopia sells the ads on this show and they make the money back. But they paid me this money up front. You know, they gave me this guarantee. They believed in me. And the amazing thing is they're a non profit. Their sole purpose is to make sure podcasts like mine, which are totally un lucrative, exist. This ad based model can keep media free and available to all. We're not behind a paywall, but we, we do ask. Once a year there's this fun drive and that's what I'm coming to you with now because it is a way to support articles of interest, but it's really a way to support the future of media and to make sure there's still a space for like strange long form shows that no one else would be able to fund. Go to Radiotopia fm. Donate. Macy's comes from this grand department store tradition. This is the place to go to make sure your wedding registry isn't just a checklist at Macy's. An actual human registry consultant will get to know you and your significant other's needs to understand what kind of espresso machine you should get or what sort of Dutch oven would fit your life best. Or maybe what color Turkish cotton towels you'd like. You get a 90 day return period on all registry items and 20% off all items that were unpurchased. And best of all, you have the confidence of working with the retailer who invented and perfected the wedding registry with over 100 years of experience. Shop@macy's.com or in store. Did you know you can binge watch your way into deeper intimacy. The website is omg yes.com it has hundreds of short videos sharing new findings from the scientifically proven largest ever research study into sexual pleasure, which was done in partnership with IU and Yale researchers. When you see evidence based, open, honest portrayals of what feels good and why, it totally takes the stigma out of sexual pleasure and it becomes obvious that this is just a part of life. On omg yes.com, real people share their real life techniques and it's all beautifully organized and presented with women of all ages, races, orientations, sharing their experiences with no blushing, no shame, no no creepy feeling. Just enthusiasm and honesty that makes you want to learn more. It's a one time payment for permanent access forever. This is not a subscription. You basically pay one time and then you have this intimate treasure map that you can explore forever on your own or with a partner. So treat yourself or give it as a gift@omg yes.com that's omg yes.com. on a hot June day, a woman in North Carolina drove to her local shopping center but found the parking lot was completely full. So she parked in one of the parking spots reserved for veterans. After about 30 minutes, she came back with all her bags and found a note under her windshield. It said, this parking is for veterans lady. Learn to read. Except she is a veteran. And when veterans like Andrea Goldstein heard about this parking lot story, it went kind of viral. They were like, yeah, exactly. I get this all the time. I get this question, like, what's your interest in the Navy? Who's the veteran? When I walked around Congress, I wore an American flag and U.S. navy pin on my lapel. My lanyard said U.S. navy. And people be like, oh, what's your connection to the Navy? But in a way that it wasn't like, did you serve? It was very much like, did your dad, husband, male relative? No, I'm still in the Navy, actually, as a reservist. Andrea was active duty in the Navy for seven years as an intelligence officer. And afterwards she worked for a number of federal agencies, including in the House of Representatives, where she was the lead staffer on A task force devoted to veteran women's issues. When I spoke to active duty women, not veterans, when I spoke to active duty women, I heard more about uniform frustrations than about sexual assault. Really? Yes. The issues with sexual assault in the military are well known. I worked on those too. But your uniform is what you're putting on every single day, and it's your representation of you belong to something and that that institution has considered you as being part of it. So if you're putting on a uniform that doesn't fit, doesn't look right, doesn't feel right, then it's something that every single day you're being told you don't belong here. You're an afterthought. An ill fitting uniform is an insidious pecking away at respect. And I thought about this for years and years. I was like, why do some of these guys look great in uniforms, but none of the women do? Even though women make up almost 18% of the US Armed Forces and they've been in combat roles for well over a decade, they have a perpetual problem getting gear that fits. And this is actually really bad. A soldier wearing an ill fitting body plate could not be protected from bullets and actually throw out her back. Like, why is it that if I go to REI and I get a backpacking backpack, it's going to shift the weight to my thighs, but the one that I'm wearing that I was issued is putting it on my hips and my spine. And this is just the latest issue and a long running problem. Women have always held positions as nurses or secretaries or mechanics or clerks or pilots and been deployed all over the world. And because of how male dominated the quartermaster department was, they never quite got the hang of how do women clothing work. It was always like a problem. This is our military layperson expert, Joshua Kerner. It's always very funny because Quartermaster Corps will like draw up something and then the women will get it and be like, have you ever met a woman? Usually it was just a men's pattern that was just feminized by making it smaller. They don't know how to cut for curves. So it's like this just fits terribly. For decades, decades and decades and decades, the khaki trousers for women, these trousers didn't fit right. The pockets didn't work. Just look at Demi Moore in GI Jane. She could not make them look good in that movie. Andrea also had to wear those same Demi Moore trousers, and they were awful. For years and years and years, senior enlisted and officers in the Navy were like, do we just want these pants to fit, which have now since been fixed. But this was like years. It sounds superficial, but an outfit that makes you look frumpy can really mess with your confidence, especially when you might already feel insecure entering this bastion of masculinity. And so to have something that was not your choice, that was forced upon you, impacting your credibility, you don't need anything else about you to count against you. It's like one of those things where, like, women have to do things better than men to, like, be equal with them. Veteran Victoria Chamberlain realized that you essentially have to be a cool girl to hang in the military. You can't be annoying. I know, that's so coded. You can't be bad at your job, you can't be bad at shooting, you can't be bad at pt. I was pretty bad at push ups, but they never like really saw me do them, so that's fine. Victoria was in the military for just under eight years. I would say, honestly, the army that I was a part of really tried to include women, be less misogynistic, but that might be the type of people and the type of units that I was associated with. Victoria worked as an oboist in the army band and then she worked in public affairs. Yeah, I experienced some things that were unsavory, but I mean, you can tell if you're about to enter a space where you're not wanted if the men say females instead of women are soldiers. And I think that is a thing in the civilian world too. Most things that you can find happening in the civilian world you can see happening in the military. It's just, it's a reflection of society. And so as a reflection of society, the army's been trying to address this, this intangible inequality where all the women just looked so much worse than the men. And one way they tried do this was with the ACUA army combat uniform alternate. The ACUA which Victoria was issued was supposed to be a gender neutral uniform. Basically it was an alternate uniform that had narrower shoulders. There was a tiny bit of a different measurement between the hip and the waist. The army combat uniform alternate was for smaller or narrower people. It's what Victoria wore. But her ACUA uniform also fit Victoria's husband, who was also in the army. And in my opinion, it like looked better on him because this like, he's not like a huge broad shouldered guy. It looked good. It like fit him better. Victoria and her husband could wear each other's uniforms, so we would share them like whatever was clean in the pile. We had the same name, same rank, but whenever her husband wore her acua, somebody always noticed. Somebody would always be like, are you wearing your wife's jacket? And that's because there were a few elements of the ACUA that were a little more noticeable. The rank insignia was moved a little bit higher so that it wasn't right in the middle of your breasts. But still, the ACUA wasn't supposed to be a women's uniform. A lot of people had it in their mind that the ACUA was only for women. And so my husband could not wear my jacket. And then I would get so mad because I'd be like, it's army combat uniform alternate. And when the army officially scrapped the ACUA, it was phased out from 2019 to 2021. Instead, the army took on a new approach to clothing and sizing and gender, one that was very much adopted in real time alongside the outdoor industry. Dude, I'm already overwhelmed. Functional Fabric Fair in Portland, Oregon, is where outdoor brands and the Department of Defense go shopping for textiles. There in the vast Portland Convention center, textile mills and textile vendors showed off their latest sweat wicking, heat absorbing, featherlight, stain proof, sturdy, stretchy miracle fabrics. Some functional fabrics. So many like that. It's like you wear the garment, but you don't feel you wear the garment. You're not allowed to say how you can do this. Of course not. The vast majority of vendors were from Taiwan. But this was in 2024, which was just a year ago. But I imagine a lot changed since all the Trump tariffs. These mills and these textile manufacturers are the ones experimenting with new chemical coatings, new twists of yarn, new methods to make fabrics perform in exciting new ways. These days, innovation isn't hard to find. It's not that brands are tinkering and struggling to look for something new. There's an embarrassment of riches out there. From hydrophobic rain shells to super soft second skin fabric to bulletproof fabric, innovation largely comes from the material vendors who are working on creating something that's really exciting and interesting that they can sell to those brands. And then the brands take material and they run with it. Daniella Kane used to lead design teams at Nike and Columbia Sportswear and Adidas back in the 90s. And at that time, we were working with marketing and all of the brand powers to getting people out of cotton into functional fabric, which were at that time climacool or dry fit. Daniela was in the industry in that pivotal moment in the 90s when polyester was rebranded as functional Fabric. But it's not the brands that came up with this genius ideas. No, it came from the materials. These companies have a real stakehold in functional fabrics. We were starting to turn more of these performance fabrics into fashionable silhouettes in the 90s and early aughts. Michelle Rose was part of a cohort of new designers who were taking these new performance fabrics and making new garments with them. I did work for Columbia Sportswear and the north face for about 15 years and designing a lot of outerwear. Designing for women in the outdoor industry used to be like designing for women in the military in that women's clothes were basically men's clothes in a smaller size. And in the outdoor industry, maybe they'd change the color. This was a practice commonly known as pink it and shrink it. And some brands wouldn't even bother to do that. Until the 90s, most outdoor and sports gear was geared towards men. And women would just buy men's gear because there wasn't a lot of stuff geared towards women. But over in athletic clothing, over in sports, there had been a sea change with the passage of title IX in 1972. Women had been participating in many more sports on a collegiate level. And so sports clothing was just starting to be made for women. The sports bra had only been invented in the 70s. People don't know that when the sports bra was created, it was literally two jockstraps that were sewn together. It was still getting perfected throughout the 80s. And so it really wasn't until the 90s and that the synthetic revolution met women's sportswear. And this new high tech performance fabric that was finally out there on the market was being designed for women's bodies. And outdoor designers like Michelle were taking outdoor wear away from, like flannel and making it way more tight and chic. I love black. I like sleek silhouettes. I will always like that. And that's the contouring when we actually started putting more shaping into activewear. And that's where athleisure came in. Ah, the birth of athleisure, that point where leggings became pants. Lululemon, Athleta, Lucy, all those came out in late 90s as some of the first outdoor and active brands that were really going towards sportswear performance stuff for women that you could wear on the street. This is, I think, in part what would eventually pave the way for gorpcore. In the 90s and into the new millennium, this high performance clothing was starting to look good. It was starting to be shaped and fit well and look flattering. Enough to want to wear around. And like, women had never really had this before. And this got to the point where in the aughts, the lines between fashion and athletic wear and outdoor wear started to get really, really blurry. Like what was considered performance wear anymore when every mall chain was selling yoga clothes, that you could actually just we anything all the time and you could buy a perfectly decent puffer coat. At Uniqlo, everything has become so similar that you can get the same kind of jacket from every outdoor brand out there or even mainstream fashion brand. Well, that's the other thing. Exactly. The race to the bottom for a $99 rain shell. And the customer is so used to getting such cheap stuff. The larger a brand gets, the more it has to hit price points, appeal to more people, keep growing, makes everything, everybody start looking the same. Leggings everywhere, sports bras everywhere. H and M has them. They're totally fine. So how do you know what's actually like quote unquote performance clothing and what's not when sort of everything has stretch in it and everything is some shade of athleisure? Well, there's a saying in the outdoors. It's like, hike your own hike. Yeah. So it's like however you want to present yourself outdoors. When I met up with Chelsea Rizzo and Alison Levy in their office, they were both wearing clothes from their brand hikerkind. But hikerkind clothes just look like turtlenecks and button down shirts and comfy pants. They just look like clothes. That's a lot of what hikerkind is trying to solve is not having multiple wardrobes for the different parts of your life. And so I was like, okay, if these clothes just look like normal clothes, why wouldn't I buy some other stretchy pants from anywhere else? Everything has performance fabric in it these days. What makes these clothes gear? Obviously you can take a performance material and make fashion clothing, and it can have some performance capabilities, because automatically if you're using performance materials, they have all those properties that the fabric can have. But designing clothing for hiking, backpacking, any sort of outdoor activity, you're thinking of the different finishes and the different seamings and every kind of detail. The elements that separate fashion clothes from performance gear are not obvious. They are there, but you have to look really closely. Like, what's an example of like a technical finish? Like a bonding. Yeah. So like bonding is like, I'll show you. So you see how it's just an adhesive. So you can see it's like, oh, it has no seam. Yeah. A bonded Seam is functionally glued instead of sewn. We made sure that the fusing was more lightweight, and those finishes are lending to the performance of the gear. Hikerkind makes outdoor clothes in sizes from extra small to 3 XL. They're marketed as women's hiking clothes, but I don't think any of their stuff comes in pink. Ours definitely err on the edge of androgyny, and we had a lot of consideration around. Do we call ourselves a women's outdoor brand? Ultimately, it was the most authentic way that we could categorize what we were doing. They're among a number of niche independent brands reimagining the outdoors and who it's for. Chelsea and I didn't feel represented, so that's why we wanted to create Hikerkind. Hikerkind started during the pandemic. Yeah, the pandemic. We saw the increase of outdoor participants and showing the diversity that's actually out there. And bigger outdoor companies have started to catch on to this. It's no longer just little niche independent brands who are trying to approach gender and sizing completely differently. Some brands call it extended sizing, we call it inclusive sizing. So we've really made a lot of improvements in overall fit across body types. This is Scott Mosier. He's REI's creative brand director. It's only within the last few years that REI has done some dramatic reimagining. We have men's and women's clothing, but we also have unisex clothing and we have non gendered, which we just call adults. And it's a completely new size chart. And this is actually a major undertaking. A quick word about how sizing usually works. Normally, commercial brands just choose a size that they consider a medium. Usually this is like a size 8. And then that's the one size that actually gets fitted on a person. And they just use math to figure out all the other sizes. As you might imagine, this doesn't always translate exactly well, and it ends up leaving a lot of bodies out or making them look bad. So these are our fit forms. Scott took me to a room full of headless cloth fit forms, and each mannequin was a completely different body, different height, different different waist, different ratio of legs and hips and waist. REI is considering all of these forms in their pattern making and their sizing. This is a lot of. There's like a room full of different bodies. Wait, may I just count how many forms there are? 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. And I counted them all. 36, 37, 38, 39. Is everyone here or some missing. Okay. A couple that people are using right now to be able to look at who are we fitting and who are we not fitting. This is a ton of labor, but this is the way REI is trying to make sure that more people are comfortable. I think we had three or four sizes in our sleeping bags, so now we have nine sizes. We think this is going to be something the industry is going to start to adopt, although actually this is already being adopted more widely than I knew. But not in the industry. If I was a designer out in industry, I might have a target market that I am trying to sell casual wear to people that are, say, ages 18 to 33. But Annette is not a designer out in industry. She is, to put it in layman's terms, the head designer for the military. I'm Annette LaFleur. I'm the branch chief for the design, pattern, and prototype branch here at Devcom Soldier center in Natick, Massachusetts. I spoke to Annette over the phone. She wasn't at work the day I went to Natick, but I got to see her workshop. Wow. This is where her magic happens. It's wild. You turn the corner of this military base and suddenly there's a fash design studio. Like, designers were cutting toiles and drawing patterns. And is that they're working on a pregnant training uniform? Yes. Yeah. A training uniform for pregnant soldiers. The army had a bunch of mannequins in all different shapes and sizes. So we do have some dress forms that are custom made to data that's specific to the military. They looked almost exactly like the dress forms I saw at rei. Almost? I mean, not quite. Army sizes are different than civilian sizes. We're using data that's specific to the military. So in general, I'd say they're more fit. But then again, you have all different body shapes and sizes. Military sizes go from extra small to 4xL, and they're in heights from xx short to xx long tops are measured by both chest and height, and bottoms are measured by both waist and inseam. So you could be a medium regular on top and a large long on bottom, or like a 2 XL short on top and a large regular on bottom. There are a lot of different combinations. You could get rather specific. The military is a broad array of people from different ages and ethnic backgrounds. And when we're designing an item, it has to fit the 5th through the 95th percentile. That's very wide range. And overall, this is very army. Like in the Marines, everybody has to be in the shape of A Dorito. The Army' always been more inclusive than other branches. But now these army uniforms, the one I saw Annette's team working on, these were not sized by gender at all. They're just in a wider range of sizes and they're able to be adjusted for each individual specific shape. You might have part of a waistband that has different mechanisms to make it larger or smaller, like the elastic or adjustment tabs. There's all different sorts of ways to adjust body armor in terms of having the plate hit in the right spot. I went to Natick on February 20, 2025, eight days after my visit. The Department of Defense issued a new policy declaring that all trans soldiers separate from service. In September, the Secretary of War told 800 generals he was tired of seeing quote, unquote, fat troops and ordered to halt gender neutral fitness standards and criticized diversity and inclusion efforts. So I don't know what's going on in Annette lafleur's workshop now. Our conversation was arranged through the military. I don't have her number to call and ask, but I can't help but wonder if I saw the last gasp of something this moment when the army was really bending over backwards to include as many soldiers as they possibly could and make them all look good. We cut and sew and make prototypes and then we collaborate with engineers and scientists in regards to the sizing that it needs to be and help them get set up for mass production. And Annette has teed me up perfectly to the second half of my little theory of gorpcore. The first half is, I think part of what made gorp core is that more bodies, especially women's bodies, were starting to be included in performance clothes and more people, people were starting to look good in them. And the second aspect has to do with who was making these performance clothes and who their market was. And I'm going to show you a very specific, I think, very interesting case study and how, I think it helped us get to the specific look of gorp after the break. Macy's comes from this grand department store tradition. This is the place to go to make sure your wedding registry isn't just just a checklist. At Macy's, an actual human registry consultant will get to know you and your significant other's needs to understand what kind of espresso machine you should get, or what sort of Dutch oven would fit your life best, or maybe what color Turkish cotton towels you'd like. You get a 90 day return period on all registry items and 20% off all items that were unpurchased. And best of all, you have the confidence of working with the retailer who invented and perfected the wedding registry with over 100 years of experience. Shop at Macy's.com or in store I want to tell you about a new series from the podcast IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson. The look examines Michelle Obama's legacy as a fashion icon both inside and outside of the White House. This podcast is a companion to Michelle's new book and the look goes beyond the pages, sharing intimate, never before heard conversations between the former first lady and many of her style and beauty collaborators. You'll hear from Jane Fonda and Jenna Lyons about aging and confidence, Farrah Jasmine Griffin about black women in the public eye, and Michelle Obama's personal stylist Meredith Coupe about modern image making. If you stick around to the end of this episode, you'll hear a sneak preview and then you can hear all four parts of the look series by searching for IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson wherever you listen to podcast My sister is one of the best dressed people that I know and her secret is the RealReal. I go on the Real Real a lot and I've probably gotten most of my shoes from the RealReal. My sister and I have developed this little love language where we send each other links from the RealReal and we're like what do you think of this? I send it to you and I'm like should I get this? And you are very intentional with what you say. Yes. And I remember the things I didn't buy that you told me that I should have gotten. Like that SC103 skirt. It's gone. Oh I know. That was so good. The RealReal is the world's largest and most trusted resource for authenticated luxury resale with thousands of new arrivals daily. No one does resale like the RealReal and this month you can get an extra $100 site credit when you sell for the first time. Go to therealreal.com articles to get your extra hundred dollars. Therealreal.com articles that's therealreal.com articles if you are a company who's trying to do business with the military, the AUSA Conference is the place to be. It's where all kinds of companies from gun manufacturers to hell health startups to cell phone carriers set up booths and try to impress the generals who are strolling around. Also present are a number of well known clothing companies and suppliers, ones you definitely know. Like you heard me talking to the representatives at Gore Tex. I'm not usually the one to do this, but go ahead. Oh, I appreciate it. They were game to talk, but most other companies were not. I stopped by this booth yesterday, but I just thought I'd come back. I'm a journalist and I'm working on a project. When I tried to speak to other company reps at their booths, many of them ignored me or shrugged me off a number of times before they would finally do me the kindness of outright refusing to talk to me. Yeah, Milliken refused to talk. Millikan is the parent company of Polartech. They had a big old booth at AUSA showing off their military clothes. But Milliken owns Polartech. I wasn't that surprised. I knew this would be hard to report on. I mean, already if you look at the websites of outdoor companies who contract with the military or make these special ops clothes, those clothes are really hard to find. Like, they bury it on their website a little bit. You have to dig around for these clothes and just know they exist. Like, Patagonia used to put their own name on the uniforms and special ops clothes they made until they started manufacturing them under a company called Lost Arrow Project. And now it's a rebranded independent company called Forgeline Solutions. And I was trying to find someone who could just talk to me in an in depth way about this. Like at Functional Fabric Fair, I saw Vibram had a booth, and you know Vibram, they make the shoe soles. So I went up to them and at first they were like, hey, what's up? Vibram loves gorpcore. It's widely known that Vibram soles are in military boots. They even had some military soles right there on display in their booth. And when I asked them about their military work, they suddenly got real jumpy. Yeah, they just wanted to be guarded of what you say. And then just when I was about to give up on getting someone to really talk to me about the world of military contracting, I did meet someone who was willing to talk. And not only was she willing to talk, she was like, come on over to our headquarters and see what we're all about. And she was the last person I would have expected given that she was definitely the best dressed person at Functional Fabric Fair. I just, you know, I like clothes. I'm probably one of the few people here that, like, have fun with clothes. Cat Sheway is the vice president of design and innovation at the popular outdoor brand Outdoor Research. Unlike most of Kat's co workers who were in shorts and flip flops, Kat was wearing a black Margiela Dress and little art gallery kitten heels. I was like, what are you doing in the outdoor industry? Fabulous. Kat, why aren't you on 7th Avenue? Even I could have used some hiking boots on this stairwell. Wow, this was a lot of steps. It is a lot of steps. Kat was taking me up the steps of Outdoor Research's office building in downtown Seattle where she was going to show me openly, matter of factly, what Outdoor Research manufactures for the United States Army. We are incredibly transparent about this part of our business and really proud of it with Outdoor Research. It's right there on their homepage, there's a tab that says Tactical and you can just click it and it says same outdoors, different mission. You're putting these kids out there into the harshest environment you have to protect them. So Outdoor Research is really special in that they're just very honest. The other thing that's really unique about Outdoor Research is that they have all three elements of everything that I've been thinking about. One, there are this high end outdoor company that you can buy at REI that pays attention to trends and makes performance clothes for civilians. And Outdoor Research also makes high end elite clothes for special operators. I saw a lot of Outdoor Research stuff at that, that so called surplus shop in Virginia Beach. And, and, and this is the really unusual part. Outdoor Research also manufactures for the entire regular Army. There are very few companies at the center of the Venn diagram like this, let alone any that are so open to talking about it. It's a nice kind of symbiotic relationship between those sides of the business and we can really push and pull innovation that way. Outdoor Research began as a civilian outdoor gear company. It was started in 1981 by nuclear physicist Ron Gregg. Ron, who started our company was just a scientist who happened to be a mountaineer. And pretty early on in the company, Outdoor Research started making equipment for the special operations community. They started doing this in the 80s. They've been in that game for a really long time. And Outdoor Research became especially known for this high tech glove system they developed. It started with the special operations community. That led us to develop a system, a seven glove system for the special forces community. That's Alex Rodero, head of Tactical at Outdoor Research. And then that's cascaded into bigger army projects like gloves for the entire army, which is just an entire next level of scale. Make anywhere from five to 6,000 pairs a month. It's got a Gore Tex insert. Of course, every single thing for the army has to be made in the United States to comply with the Barry Amendment. So Outdoor Research has their US Glove factory right there in the building. So here's the fifth floor, which is our sewing floor. It was so unexpected and like almost bizarre to go from cubicles on one floor and the next floor is a full blown factory full of machinery and people cranking out gloves. May I touch a glove? Yeah, we want to probably touch one of these. Warm and fresh off the rope. Oh, that's great. Those gloves that I touched that were going out to the whole army, they were good, solid quality gloves, but they weren't special operator quality. They weren't top of the line. Because there are different considerations when you're making gear for the whole conventional military. Instead of making the best products you can possibly develop. When it comes to the whole army, the Department of Defense basically tells Outdoor Research the specs they want. And Outdoor Research has to meet them. The military calls the shots. But when you go for the big army, it gets very competitive, very price sensitive. Made in America costs a lot. Those gloves that I touched are listed on Outdoor Research's website for over 200 bucks a pair. But there's no button you can click to buy them. They're for government contract only. So the government's always trying to bring the price down. Like, Outdoor Research might propose a design to the Department of Defense, and then the army might take that design and strip it down. Then the government will take the product we develop. They'll change materials or remove features, sometimes to the detriment of the performance of the product at the end of the day, when they need to cut corners and cut costs to supply product to hundreds of thousands. So this is part of why soldiers and regular infantry will sometimes buy their own supplementary gear. They might want to get something slightly nicer for themselves than what they're issued. And for Outdoor Research, the government's frugality means that if they make a bid for a big army contract, Outdoor Research could lose that contract to some other company or brand that's offering to do it for just a pennies less. So when you get into these larger scale programs, it's bigger stakes. It's, you know, high risk, high reward. Yeah, we walked by some big, high tech robots that are used for making footwear. Outdoor Research bought these for a military contract that didn't end up happening. The government had asked us to engage. We did. We were ready to go. And then they shifted course. So what are you going to do with the robots? I'm trying to sell the robots. So Outdoor Research has two completely different business models. They have Their company, Outdoor Research, the retail brand, the outdoor side, where you've got seasonal forecasts and planning, and we spend two years developing new product. And on the military contracting side, it is a goddamn rodeo for us. I mean, the government's our best customer, but they're also our worst. Like, they don't plan, and they can't give us a forecast, but then they'll come and they'll say, here's a large order out of nowhere, and, wow, that's great. Thank you so much. But now I can't fulfill it fast enough. Although when a big government contract actually does work out, of course, that's great for business. So, you know, we have an 8020 model where the tactical business is 20% of our business. Designer Kat Sheaewey, again. And sometimes that balance shifts. Sometimes the tactical business is really, really good. And it helps to support the outdoor business when the outdoor business is in trouble and oftentimes vice versa. So it's actually great to be diversified in this way. As we learned through the pandemic, having you as manufacturing was a lifesaver for us. I don't think we laid off a single person in the pandemic. Having this factory is a special tool for a designer. It means that if Kat has an idea, she can go make a sample of it right there in the building. And government contracting is the way to keep this factory alive. It's this factory. It's the nature of this work. It's all part of why fabulous Cat is here in Seattle and not on 7th Avenue. The fact that we do outfit our troops for the harshest environments, that's like, the most interesting design challenge. And even though Kat mostly designs the civilian outdoor wear, still, all the tactical stuff, all the army gloves and the special ops clothes, they're all still being designed right here side by side in this one building. They all bleed into each other. So we have things that get developed for the military that then get commercialized in our outdoor space, and then we have vice versa. We have things that we build for the commercial side, and they go into the military side. Crossover is inevitable. Civilian clothes and military clothes end up sharing a lot of qualities. Outdoor research might literally produce the same jacket in two different colors, one for special ops and one for the outdoor industry. The outdoor industry jacket will probably be more colorful, and it might have a fun, reflective logo on it and lots of pop trims. And then for the tactical market, the same jacket might be in sleeker, darker, ranger green or black or coyote brown or multicam. A little more toned down functional and undercover. In tactical clothes, the brand logos are muted or non reflective. We do put our logos on it, but they're tonal, they're subtle. And that necessary stealthiness gives special operator outdoor clothes a very different look. It means these tactical clothes end up being high performance, more expensive, harder to find, and, and quite simply cooler looking. So this is just me, a podcaster, putting pieces together. But ever since the war on terror, there was a growing visibility of special forces and a growing number of high end outdoor companies who were also making these lines of matte, sleek outdoor clothes in black and coyote brown and ranger green and multicam. Right. And if you recall the definition of gorpcore from the inventor of the word gorpcore, it went a little something like this. So it's been made a little bit chicer. It's maybe made a little bit more streamlined. It's maybe crafted in better materials, maybe even more technical materials, but in cooler colors. So can I tell you my personal theory of gorpcore? So I think, and I wonder if this is if you've come across this. I think one of the reasons that gorpcor came to be is because of special forces stuff. You know that moment when Drake and Virgil Abloh wore their matching arc' teryx leaf jackets? Yes, yes, exactly, exactly. A peak moment in the ascent of gorpcore was when Drake and the late Virgil Abloh were seated front row at a New York Fashion week event in 2020. This was just before the pandemic. And they were wearing matching rain shells by arc' Teryx Leaf. Leaf stood for law enforcement and armed forces. Although arc' teryx Leaf has recently rebranded as arc' teryx Pro. Whatever. Drake and Virgil's jackets both were in multicam. They were obviously tactical. And these jackets both cost $1,000. They instantly became grails and people, people wanted them. Special operators had already been wearing these sleek, subtle, expensive outdoor clothes in the field for years, but fashion retailers and celebrities had just discovered them. I also think it was good marketing for the brand. Like this product is so good, so technically advanced, that the police and the military use it. That's my friend, Peter. And the year gorpcore was coined, Peter was working as a buyer for a niche luxury boutique in Manhattan. In 2017, I was buying menswear for Totokayo. Ugh, RIP Todokayo. I loved that store. It was upscale and cutting edge and kind of intimidating, but you always found something new. And back in 2017, Canada Goose was trying to get Totokaio to stock their coats. But it wasn't the right fit. Canada Goose was, let's face it, not exactly cool. They made a great product. It was everywhere, but it wasn't cool. In 2018, Canada Goose upped the offer. Instead of their normal parkas, they let Todo Kaioh sell their tactical coats, the ones Canada Goose had been producing for Canadian law enforcement for decades. Same quality, same styles, no logo patch. It was sleek and rare and expensive and high performance. We got some really good press and it sold really, really fast. So to be clear, I am not trying to insinuate that special ops fashion is solely responsible for gorpcore. I am just saying chronologically. A lot of outdoor brands were making sleek, muted jackets for police and special forces before they started making them for fashion. I don't think your theory is wrong. I called Kat at Outdoor Research to run this by her. Tactical gear feels like it's at the root of the gorpcore trend. We have have pieces that we sell in our coyote and ranger green in our regular line that outsell some of the bright colors. To use our prior example, Canada Goose since 2011 has sold their popular black label. Their red logo is essentially blacked out, and it looks so similar to the tactical lines they had already been producing. I think people are gravitating to those tactically adjacent products and using them as fashion in their colored corp core wardrobe. If you want to take my little theory just one step further into the realm of conspiracy, you can just take or leave what seasoned consultant costume historian Charles McFarlane had to point out. You just happen to have GorpCorp coming up. @ the same time you have the global war on terror truly slowing down. I think there's a connection point there. The outdoor companies that had built a whole market that has opened up and developed over the years of the global war on terror that then as those wars slow down, which is happening from 2014 to 2017, that tactical market, it needs to go somewhere and it can go into the fashion market. That's so interesting. Yeah. The paramilitary part of it never really came up. Jason Chen seemed like half convinced of gorpcore's connection to the special forces. I think that it was more like, look at all the badass shit you could accomplish in this gear. Not necessarily with this military undertones to that. Right? Yeah. Even though it's in camouflage, right? Exactly, exactly. But regardless of whether there's causation or merely correlation between the rise of gorp corps and the visibility of the Navy SEALs, there is an undeniable connection between gorp Corps and the military. I mean, a connection to the military is built into outdoor clothes and outdoor companies. Even small, peaceful indie brands like ikerkind. When they started their brand, it was during the pandemic. They had to start manufacturing domestically. The factory that we were in did military contracts. This connection between the outdoor industry and the military is unavoidable. It's glaring. It's everywhere. I just didn't see it for many, many years. Like before I started this series, I think I willfully ignored it for a very long time. And Annette lafleur, the fashion designer for the military, got right to the reason why, in the end, yes, the number one priority is giving the soldier an enhanced capability to be more lethal. To not have them think about what they're wearing per se, but to be able to focus on their mission and what they're supposed to be doing. And that is what they're supposed to be doing. Being lethal. That's what armies do. An army that isn't lethal is a bad army. So that shouldn't have shocked me. And yet I was shocked as a civilian. I was like, whoa. I hadn't heard anyone be that blunt. And for some reason, it was especially sobering to hear that from the military fashion designer. Maybe because I spent so much time with all the these outdoor designers talking about how these clothes are for safety and warmth and dryness and protection. But in the military, yeah, it's ultimately for this. It's for killing. And what Annette is implying is that these uniforms she's made, these adjustable uniforms that come in many different sizes are lethal. That this American army, full of many different people in many different shapes and sizes, is already pretty frickin dangerous. But lethality is something that our current Secretary of War is like, obsessed with. Pete Hegseth is like, our military needs to be more lethal. And he wants to accomplish this by narrowing the definition of what a soldier is. And many minority officers and female officers have left the force or been asked to leave. It's increasingly becoming a military that looks less and less less like the general American public, which is terrifying as this powerful force, which historically has been directed outwardly, turns inward. Articles of interest is by Avery Trufelman with careful edits and loving sense making by Alison Barringer. Consultant on this season is Charles McFarlane with fact checking by Yasmin Al Syed and music by Ray Royal Lullatone and Sasami and mixing and mastering by Jocelyn Gonzales. Special thanks to industry expert Emily Walzer and Brian Davis of Wooden Sleepers, shoe designer Adara Delabaugh and Dr. Amber Williams of Utah State University. Thank you to Drew Haupt. And thank you, dear listener, if you would like to remember that famous picture of Drake and Virgil Abloh, I mean, you could Google that picture or you could just go to articlesofinterest.substack.com and I'll already have it pulled up for you. So I promised you'd get to hear a sneak preview of IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson. The series is called the look, and it examines Michelle Obama's legacy as a fashion icon in and outside of the White House. I'll play you a clip now, and in this segment, you'll hear a snippet of a conversation between Michelle Obama and African American literature professor Farrah Jasmine Griffin. Moderated by Project Runway host and editor in chief of Elle, Nina Garcia. Okay, here it comes. You can listen to all four parts of the look series by searching for IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson. Wherever you listen to podcasts. Farah, I'm going to come and completely change tax here. You said because the term lady has historically been denied black women, some believe that black first lady to be an oxymoron. What do you mean by that? Because I am sure a lot of people felt that way. Yeah, well, lady was a term that was, you know, had so much meaning instilled in it. And it was racial meaning. It was a class meaning. Right. A certain kind of upper class white woman. And not, we're not talking about Britain where it's a status, but here that black women were not ladies. They were women, but they were not ladies. There were even years before black women would be married, black women would be called Mrs. Right. So the idea of a first lady being a black woman or a woman of any color other than a white woman was just sweet, an anathema. Like, what does that mean? They couldn't even imagine it. Right. And so for Mrs. Obama to step into that role for many people was just like the sun falling out of the sky. It just did not make sense to them at all. And for some of them, there was a kind of hostility about that. And for others, I think it was just something that they had to get used to. They had to grow into that. We've adopted the term first lady for the women who are the wives of pastors, like black culture has adopted that term. But for the general culture, I think that for some people, not all, but for some people, there was real resistance because we've got this long history that black women are women, but they are not ladies. I think, thankfully, our kids have had more freedom, more opportunities, but they take so much for granted. They do. And it really wasn't that far, long ago. My mother's generation, my grandmother's, these are people that this generation of kids, they know, they knew. But that's where history and one of the reasons why Farah is forward. You know, when I did this book, I knew I wanted. And I knew Farah in particular, could put the sociological, historical impact, context, which I think is so important because we are in a battle now of who gets to define history in a way that intentionally keeps a lot of this stuff out. So the next generation of kids don't even know that it exists. I mean, if we don't talk about segregation and slavery, if we don't talk about the suffragist movement, if we don't talk about the struggles of LGBT community and the history of who we were and why that was problematic, not to place blame, not to say that it's your fault today, but it's like if we don't know our history, we are doomed to repeat it. Radiotopia from PRX.