Blue planet clothing boom boom jeans8/12/2023 Three years ago, I was planning a two-week hike inĪnd looking for environmentally friendly outdoor wear. And yet I had never really learned much about them. Patagonia is a name that you often hear in the context of sustainable fashion. But we haven’t done that, because we think that this is the way to keep putting pressure on our society to do the right thing.” See the price tags and weep Later the same day, I hear him talking to some of the employees in Amsterdam about the end of capitalist society: “Of course we’ve asked ourselves whether we shouldn’t just shut down Patagonia, if we were really being true to our ideals, because everything we do causes some kind of damage. That was very eye-opening and, really, a big wake-up call for us.” After that we started to look at our own supply chain. It was our first truly successful environmental campaign. I helped write the ads in The New York Times and The Washington Post that ultimately got the “Patagonia was focusing more and more on environmental work, which was very interesting to me. Everyone else surfed and climbed, but I was never into the extreme sports,” he says in a measured tone.Īfter working as a sales manager for 20 years, he quit to pursue his passions: writing books and poetry. “At Patagonia I was always something of an outsider. Now 68, Stanley is dressed in a chequered shirt, blue jeans and athletic shoes. “It started out as a summer job, but I kind of stayed with it my whole life,” he says with a grin. Aged 20, he began to help out at his uncle’s company, a predecessor of Patagonia. How exactly is Patagonia making the planet better? And is their approach working? The outsider inside PatagoniaĪs the people with the surfboard start pulling out wetsuits from storage lockers, I take the stairs to where Vincent Stanley, Patagonia’s "Director of Philosophy", is waiting for me in a small conference room. Speaking with Yvon Chouinard in person won’t be possible: “These days he’s out fishing a lot,” Stanley tells me. I want to know more about that idealism, which is why I’ve come to Patagonia’s European headquarters. What Chouinard is attempting to do, she writes, is “more than change a single corporation – it is an attempt to challenge the culture of consumption that is at the heart of the global ecological crisis”. Instead, Klein admires Patagonia as a unique In which Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard (81) reflects on his life in the business world, Klein asserts: “I don’t endorse multinational corporations, even ‘green’ ones like Patagonia.” In her foreword to Let My People Go Surfing, The journalist and activist Naomi Klein strikes a critical note. That sounds paradoxical from a company raking in a billion dollars a year from selling clothes, with all the ecological impact that implies. Is this really the same company that wants to save the world from environmental crisis? Patagonia’s mission statement, far from something blandly typical – along the lines of: we make the best equipment to get the best out of outdoor adventures – is simpler, and much braver: “We’re in business to save our home planet.” "Chouinard is attempting to challenge the culture of consumption at the heart of the global ecological crisis" – Naomi KleinĪnd then, as I see with my own eyes, there’s the company’s long-standing commitment to fighting everything that hurts the environment – a whole history of campaigns againstĪnd governments which deny climate change. But if you think that Patagonia is just another manufacturer of fleece jackets, sleeping bags and backpacks: think again.įor one thing, it’s been known to urge customersįor another, there’s a camper van of Patagonia staff driving across the US to mend customers’ beloved but worn-out products. It’s one of the world’s biggest and best-known names in outdoor wear, with more than 50 stores around the world. Patagonia is an American clothing brand with sales of This is the scene at Patagonia’s European headquarters in Amsterdam. In the corner: a small group fiddling with a surfboard, and busy preparing a protest action against Norwegian oil companyĮquinor’s plans to drill for oil off the coast of Australia. On the table: a pile of books on environmental activism. On the walls: photographs of snow-covered mountain peaks and vast, verdant forests.
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