Axie Navas  reviews VOORMI shares a vision for the future

Voormi's Plan to Revolutionize Our Outerwear and the Mountain-Town Economy

This month, a tiny Colorado startup will attempt a bold rescue of the nation's mountain towns while reinventing waterproof-breathable fabrics. How? With this super-comfy hoody.

"Working in Pagosa allows us to focus on things that are needed rather than things that are trending," Smith says. What was needed, they decided, wasn't another new material but an entirely new approach to making it. "If you lay out all the garments in the industry, they're all made in one or two factories, and they all perform the same way," says Dustin English, who serves as Voormi's director of product integrity. "We wanted to make something unique from natural fibers using resources in the area we're playing in." brian-skean-voormi_h.jpg Sewer Brian Skean at Voormi's Pagosa Springs factory. (Courtesy of Voormi) Instead of gluing pieces of fabric to a membrane, Voormi developed a way to knit a textile—in this case, wool—through it. The new method, patented under the name Core Construction, creates a single-layer jacket that's mostly weatherproof but wears like a fleece. The technology will debut in two shells this October—the men's Fall Line and women's High-E—which will be sold along with Voormi's other products in 40 retailers and at Voormi.com. In Outside's tests, Core Construction was adept at deflecting snow and wind, was warm enough to wear all day on a ski hill, and fit and felt like a sweatshirt. It didn't hold up in sleet, but according to Smith, it isn't meant to. "There are a lot of 100 percent seam-taped hard shells out there," he says. "I'm not sure the world needs another one."