Believing that making a jacket that’s marginally less bad for the environment is a mechanism to stop global warming is akin to believing that the solution to alcoholism is drinking light beer.
I wrote about my time lurking in Ventura and working Patagonia and how and why I reached this conclusion on my substack, link in bio.
From having lived the corporate life for over three decades, I typically find it interesting if not amusing to read what goes on behind the office HQ doors. Every organization has its skeletons in the closet. The fact that Patagonia made/still makes gear for the military is fine by me and if it's military grade and benefiting the military's capabilities then all the better, regardless of who's military it is. Claim it and be proud of it, just don't hide it as that's where the hypocrisy comes in. There is nothing wrong with designing and building a great product; virtue signaling and burying the truth about your corporate intentions is where the line is crossed in my opinion. I'll add that I find it ironic that "outdoor companies" like Patagonia promote engagement in activities such as fly fishing and surfing which exist on limited resources (there are only so many rideable waves and only so many fishable steams) all to sell more product/make@more money. Patagonia isn't the first to do it and won't be the last, but if you really cared about protecting activities and the resources of the things you love, such as surfing and fly fishing, then why the hell build and promote a commercial product line behind them and attempt to engage the mass public to join the club just so you can sell more product/profit. It's internal cannibalism of the things you love by destroying the limited platform of the resource itself. Ask yourself, has the experience of surfing or fly fishing gotten any better over the last 25 years because of adding hundreds of thousands to its ranks of participants? Thank you/no thank you.
Good for you for telling this story. It’s not too hard to find most of this info re: military contracts and the latest “earth is our only shareholder” marketing campaign. It is a little harder to unearth the doings of the Holdfast Collective but r/Patagonia has some good sleuths. “Patagonia's MARS (Military Advanced Regulator System) PCU (Protective Combat Uniform) line was made for Special Operation Forces (SOF) like Navy Seals.” For sale now: NEW PATAGONIA MULTICAM OCP LEVEL 9 COMBAT PANT 32 X-SHORT
$290.00 etc etc
