Patagonia Synchilla and the Long Road to Gorpcore

In 1957 Yvon Chouinard taught himself to blacksmith and hammered his first climbing pitons out of an old harvester blade. Nearly seventy years later, the clothing company that grew out of that habit is owned by a trust and a climate nonprofit, and its fleece pullover is worn by people who have never touched a rock.

The garment in the middle of that story is the Synchilla Snap-T. Four snaps, a stand-up collar, a flapped chest pocket and nylon trim. It looks like nothing. That is the point.

Pitons first, clothes second

Chouinard and Tom Frost formally founded Chouinard Equipment in 1965, and it became the biggest climbing hardware company in the United States. The clothing was almost an accident. In 1970 Chouinard started climbing in rugby shirts he had found in Scotland, and by 1972 he was importing them for American customers. In 1973 the company adopted the Patagonia name for its clothing and opened its first store in Ventura, California. The Fitz Roy skyline logo came in 1975. The hardware side later ran into trouble. Chouinard Equipment filed for bankruptcy in 1989 after losing safety lawsuits, and former employees bought the business and carried on as Black Diamond.

The early clothes were about staying warm on a wall, and wool and down had problems. Wool got heavy when wet. Down was useless when soaked. In 1977 Patagonia released a pile jacket, a synthetic layer that stayed warm in the damp. In 1980 it started teaching customers to dress in layers, a system the fleece would soon slot into.

Malden Mills and the birth of Synchilla

Pile worked, but Patagonia wanted something softer, and it found a partner in Aaron Feuerstein of Malden Mills in Lawrence, Massachusetts. In the late 1970s the two companies worked on turning the mill's polyester into a double-faced insulating fabric. Patagonia sold its version under the name Synchilla, while Malden sold the same family of fabric to other brands as Polarfleece, renamed Polartec in 1986. The Skiing History obituary of Feuerstein lays out that partnership in detail.

The Synchilla Snap-T pullover arrived in 1985 and became the house classic. In 1993 fleece made from recycled plastic soda bottles arrived, and Patagonia's current Synchilla is listed as recycled polyester. Malden Mills had its own famous chapter in December 1995, when its Lawrence plant burned down and Feuerstein kept hundreds of workers on the payroll while he rebuilt. He lost control of the company in 2001, and it became Polartec Inc. in 2007.

The vest years

Fleece gave Patagonia a second life that had nothing to do with climbing. By the 2010s its zip fleeces and vests, often embroidered with a company logo, had become office wear in finance and tech, a soft uniform worn over a button-down. In April 2019 the company said it would focus its co-branded corporate program on mission-driven companies, with B Corps as priority clients, and reports at the time said financial institutions were among the firms that would no longer get logo vests, as Time reported. The oxford button-down underneath survived the change.

It was not the first time the company had put its money where its catalog was. Since 1986 it had pledged 1 percent of sales or 10 percent of profit, whichever was higher. Three years after the vest decision it went much further. On September 14, 2022, Patagonia announced that Chouinard was handing over ownership. All of the voting stock, 2 percent of the company, went to the Patagonia Purpose Trust. The other 98 percent, the nonvoting stock, went to the Holdfast Collective, a nonprofit that receives profits to fight climate change.

What gorpcore borrowed

In May 2017 the writer Jason Chen named the look in an article for The Cut. Gorpcore took its name from gorp, the hiking slang for trail mix, often explained as good old raisins and peanuts, which is probably a backronym. It described city people wearing technical outdoor clothes with no intention of going outdoors, a cousin of normcore with better zippers.

The trend took off in the 2020s, boosted during the pandemic when everyone suddenly wanted to be outside. Patagonia sat at the center, alongside Arc'teryx, The North Face and Salomon, whose trail shoe we cover in our history of the Salomon XT-6. Styled right, a Snap-T now sits as easily next to Carhartt WIP double knees as it does next to a climbing harness.

Gorpcore also explains why a waxed Barbour and a Snap-T can sit in the same closet. Both were made for weather, both last for years, and both look better after they have been used. More of that thinking is on our wardrobe essentials hub and in the Style section.

If you buy one, buy the regular Synchilla Snap-T rather than a heavier jacket and wear it as a mid layer. Pick a trim color you like, because you will see it every day. The company's future profits are pledged to climate work through the Holdfast Collective, which is a stranger ending for a fleece pullover than anyone writing about gorpcore in 2017 would have guessed.