Haute Outdoors? Columbia Hires New York Fashion Designer

Wow. Very interesting. Can’t wait to see what comes out of this.

I’m glad they will make something fashion oriented. I live in Seattle and bad weather doesn’t keep you from going out it just keeps you from looking good.

This is vile. Worse than their $1,200 heated parka from the linked article. If they’re trying to turn it around and compete with Westcomb or something, hiring some d-bag NY design lame isn’t the way to do it.

I like old Columbia stuff for bumming around – they’re stuff is fine for casual wear and they should stick with it. They own Mountain Hardwear which has a decent rep – they should just focus on upping and expanding that as their higher end line, not getting Columbia proper into gag fashion design.
They’re doing everything wrong – makes me wanna pitch my old Columbia cotton logo tees, lest anyone think I support this new swill.

There are always people with more money than brains and apparently Columbia wants to milk the cash cow. It’s a sad day.

While I’m not going to go so far as to say it’s vile, it seems like they’re not quite getting their priorities right. It seems like a renewed focus on credible, well made products, using great fabrics and great construction (and not gimmicky technologies) would push the needle for them much more than this collab with Jeffrey. Eddie Bauer’s rebirth with First Ascent seems to get it right IMO.

They are a public company and many public companies have different brands under the same umbrella and all have to show a profit at the end of the day. If you remove yourself and limit your disdain, you will hopefully understand it makes sense. I agree Mountain Hardware should be their premier mountain brand that is technical without gimmicky bells and whistles, Columbia should be mass market their fleece etc. with bells and whistles and Jeffrey or whatever they choose to do with that collaboration should be another stand alone brand. Currently Columbia sells in Nordstrom and I shop there, I am not buying Columbia, I am buying either something like fashion oriented like Jeffrey and then would buy something like Mountain Hardwear for active use. Personally I am a Patagonia consumer…..