Will Palmer Of Outsideonline reviews Voormi Featured
The 21st century seems like a mess so far. Gridlock in Washington. Rising seas. Corporate domination. Kardashians. But if you've been paying attention, you know that there are positive things happening all over the place as well, and with accelerating frequency. Consider the clothes you wear. While mass-produced, polluting sweatshop apparel isn't going away overnight, there are people all over the world—from Portland to Brooklyn to Addis Ababa and, yes, China—who are trying to make style sustainable.
This winter I went on a mission to find young companies that are focused on crafting quality apparel. Slow Fashion, some call it. You know the concept: Pay a premium for a really well-designed and responsibly manufactured jacket or pair of pants; love it and live in it for three times as long as you thought you would. Voilà: By shelling out more up front, you saved yourself money.
The best news for all? These progressive clothiers are making stuff built for adventure: new technical fabrics that transition easily from workplace to workout; cycling garb that looks as good in a coffee shop as it does on a bike; thermal jackets that appear on the trail Saturday afternoon and at the bar Saturday night.
The 15 companies here are not doing their world changing somewhere else—they're all based in North America. That means onshore jobs, local economies, and community building. It's enough to make you think the future's gonna work out after all.
This two-year-old Pagosa Springs, Colorado, company is focused on quality and innovation. They source the merino wool for their midlayers and baselayers from Rocky Mountain ranches and do all their manufacturing in the USA, in small-batch production runs. More exciting is the proprietary tech Voormi is applying to its products. By sewing synthetic fibers directly into the wool, they're able to create waterproof, breathable fabrics without gluing two layers together.
We Like: the Men's Access Pullover , which is one part office-casual sweater and two parts technical midlayer, for hitting the mountains when you've got no idea what the weather's going to do.