Fall - InsideOutdoor Magazine
Fall - InsideOutdoor Magazine
Fall - InsideOutdoor Magazine
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Merrell’s Bedlam is an<br />
“action sport inspired”<br />
camouflaged canvas boot<br />
for multisport use.<br />
Of course, in the bigger picture,<br />
trail shoes are getting lighter and<br />
sleeker. Even boot brand<br />
Lowa made a<br />
major push<br />
into the trail<br />
running and<br />
outdoor crosstraining<br />
categories<br />
this year. But at the<br />
same time, there’s also a<br />
sense that low-cut profiles<br />
and slimmed down<br />
outsoles won’t work for every done-in-a-day activity<br />
and end user. So among the many “athletic-inspired,”<br />
mesh upper trail runners, there<br />
was a fair share of high-cut, leather-based<br />
hikers and even a few new “light backpacking”<br />
boots designed to crossover as “everyday<br />
use shoes.”<br />
Again, ultralight, by no means, has become<br />
less important. It’s just not driving every design<br />
decision as it seemed to do during the past few<br />
years. Or at least its predominant place on the<br />
hype cycle has been somewhat usurped by<br />
“going green” and sustainability.<br />
Sustaining Momentum<br />
Meanwhile, from outsole to outerwear,<br />
the sustainability groove continues to charge the<br />
room, some advocates looking to change their products,<br />
some looking to change the world. Some more<br />
realistic about change than others.<br />
As would be expected, there was a bounty of green<br />
gear and components, but the call to sustainable living<br />
is causing more subtle changes that go beyond<br />
the greening of products and production. Consider<br />
a shift taking place within outdoor lifestyle apparel,<br />
for example. Sure, there’s organic cotton and earthfriendly<br />
bamboo, but there’s also a trend emerging<br />
that, at least partly, can be traced back to the<br />
bike-to-work movement.<br />
The concept of “function meets fashion”<br />
has become cliché in the world of outdoor<br />
apparel, but we are seeing a slightly new<br />
twist on this old trend. It’s difficult to wrap<br />
a label around the concept, but it deviates a<br />
bit from “performance pieces in fashionable<br />
colors and stylings” and represents more than<br />
“works in the outdoors but still looks good.” What<br />
we are seeing now is more about “function meets<br />
function,” as in sport performance functionality<br />
in the back with design functionalities for office<br />
and everyday life in the front.<br />
20 | <strong>InsideOutdoor</strong> | <strong>Fall</strong> 2008<br />
The model is best illustrated by the bike commuter<br />
clothing lines from folks such as Gramicci and Smartwool.<br />
A pair of wool bike/work shorts from Smartwool,<br />
for example, sports a woven twill typical of wool<br />
suits, says Smartwool’s PR firm SnL Communications,<br />
while a smart city jacket by Gramicci hides a reflective<br />
strip tucked away in a lower back pocket. Merrell<br />
Apparel, for its part, incorporates reflective strips on<br />
the sleeve of a shirt that strap down around the wrist,<br />
hidden from sight, when in the office. Stretch jeans,<br />
cycling shorts with a removable chamois and argyle<br />
performance socks, such as those from Fox River, also<br />
define the trend.<br />
Whatever marketers decide to call it, one upshot of<br />
this trend is the expansion of outdoor apparel<br />
from the weekend trail and into daily<br />
life and the work week, without necessarily<br />
chasing the fashion whims of department<br />
store shoppers or waiting for outdoor looks<br />
to once again become “fashionable.”<br />
Moving a bit more directly within the sustainability<br />
movement, solar and self-powered<br />
technologies continue to get increasingly interesting,<br />
if for no other reason than the potentially<br />
massive impact they can have on<br />
the world’s energy production and consumption.<br />
Companies such as Brunton<br />
and Seattle Sports lead the<br />
way with new alternative-powered<br />
lights,<br />
Fox River’s new performance<br />
argyle socks exemplify the<br />
trend toward office/outdoor<br />
crossover apparel.<br />
radios and chargers,<br />
with increasingly impressive<br />
output and<br />
charging capabilities.<br />
One particularly<br />
nifty item is the self-powered ActiveTrax Audio from<br />
Seattle Sports. The ActiveTrax combines an iPod/mp3<br />
speaker with an AM/FM/Weatherband radio that is<br />
charged through dynamo cranking or a built-in solar<br />
panel. Small enough to take anywhere, the ActiveTrax<br />
Audio cranks out impressive sound<br />
without the need for batteries or electricity.<br />
Elsewhere, one of the more interesting<br />
possibilities among the alt-powered<br />
opportunities was found over<br />
on the less-traveled ESA show floor,<br />
in the PowerFilm booth.<br />
PowerFilm produces<br />
monolithically<br />
integrated solar<br />
panels on<br />
thin and flexible<br />
plastic using<br />
a roll-to-roll<br />
The ActiveTrax Audio from Seattle Sports<br />
can be charged via crank or sun power.
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