Today on THE ROCK FIGHT (an outdoor podcast that aims for the head) design executive Michelle Rose returns to break down a recent story about unisex sizing at outdoor apparel brands.
A recent REI blog post talked about how unisex sizing is starting gain traction in the outdoor apparel world. But a deeper look reveals shallow penetration with outdoor brands and that there are significant gains left to be made.
Today on the show Michelle details the upside of embracing genderless sizing and what can be learned from the fashion apparel brands who have already made headway on this topic.
Find all of Michelle's work by visiting Struktur Society.
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Episode Transcript
Colin (00:00):
Welcome to the Rock Fight where we speak our truth, slay sacred cows, and sometimes agree to disagree. This is an outdoor podcast that aims for the head. I'm Colin True, and today Michelle Rose is back on the show to talk through a trend making some news across the outdoor apparel space as well as the fashion world. Before we welcome Michelle, I want to ask you, have you signed up for news from the Front Rock Fights newsletter? If you haven't, you're missing out on stuff you can't get anywhere else. But in our once a week email blast, head over to rock fight.co. Sign up today and alright, let's start the show.
Chris DeMakes (00:31):
Rock fight. Rock Fight, fight.
Colin (00:36):
Alright, Michelle Rose is back on the rock fight. How are we doing, Michelle?
Michelle (00:39):
I'm doing great, Colin. Thanks for having me back.
Colin (00:43):
Did you watch the Oscars?
Michelle (00:46):
I'm going to almost not want to answer. No, you can say no. I'm trying to avoid as much social media and TV and different things that I don't really want to do. And used to be that the Oscars was the thing that you watch it for fashion for trends and you want to know what's going on and you talk about it and just was not important to me this time with everything that's going on. So I did not, and I am blissfully unaware.
Colin (01:15):
Well, I wanted to talk about how much I did not like Emily Blunt's dress, but I'll have to find somebody else to do that with. Now
Michelle (01:21):
I'm sad. I love Emily Blunt. I
Colin (01:23):
Love Emily Blunt, she's amazing. But she had this weird dress where the straps on her shoulders were permanently elevated above her shoulders and it looked kind of like a weird Battlestar Galactica like extras kind of costume from 1979 or something. So anyway, but that's fine. I get it. I appreciate your good life choices.
Michelle (01:42):
Yes. And you're talking about her, so it actually was successful.
Colin (01:46):
It worked.
Michelle (01:48):
Good job.
Colin (01:48):
Emily wants designer matter.
Michelle (01:50):
Yeah, it doesn't matter if you're on the worst or best dressed list, it matters if you don't get on any list.
Colin (01:57):
That's the whole no bad PR thing, right?
Michelle (02:00):
Right, exactly.
Colin (02:02):
Alright, well I reached out to you because it was a recent post on re's blog by Amanda Loudon who's talking about how Gen Z is influencing apparel branch to introduce gender neutral clothing. And the post opens up talking about a non-binary runner in New York City who had become increasingly frustrated with their options for running, being limited to only men's. And then they discovered an apparel brand called Backline, which I had actually never heard of. Backline, I've looked at their website, some really cool stuff. But the backline has removed gender labeling in its line. The blog goes on to report that brands such as Prana, smartwool, Jan G, and of course REI, we're following suit. So I suppose let's start with unisex sizing is not new. Digging around before we hit record, we were talking about it, I found an article from The Atlantic in 2015 talking about fashion brands who were bringing this trend to the forefront. So by that metric, the outdoor industry is a little behind on this by almost a decade here. But anyway, from your perspective, how sincere is this move? Is this simply brands capitalizing on a new market potential? What do you think about this?
Michelle (03:06):
I had a lot of thoughts about this and yes, you're right. We're late to the game in the outdoor industry, which when it comes to these types of trends, we are as the outdoor industry has not been trend focused and rightfully so, to stay more authentic in the past as I think they would. We've used
Colin (03:29):
To, that's the word authentics the word. Right,
Michelle (03:30):
Right. And I think that's always the challenge because things that are trending are driving so much of the choices people are making. It's hard to dig into if brands are sincere. Now I'm a big fan of a lot of the brands that you mentioned, and I did not know that they were doing that. And so the fact that I didn't know that is ais there. And the thing is, I'm not sure how sincere they are. So what I dug into, and that is a bit of the problem as we've seen, we saw it early on with sustainability 20 years ago when we were first starting to talk about it, is you start to see it becoming a trend and you want to jump on the bandwagon. You feel like, oh, I've got to look at this, I've got to try something, but it's not a big initiative for the company.
(04:29)And so you get a little project to the side, well, let's try this. Let's do a little capsule this, let's test this out and see if it works. And that usually fails and it's usually driven by somebody, the designers marketing team or somebody in the company that has a passion towards something. But if it's not a directive from the top and part of the brand's DNA, it ultimately fails these little tendrils of trying things out rarely turn into something. I don't know if you've had that same experience, but I have some perspectives on this. I'm
Colin (05:07):
Sure. I mean, well, I wrote in our outline, you notice on the sustainability and the DEI front brands start to quietly walk things back when it's not in the zeitgeist anymore, it's just you start to like, oh, this isn't as important as it was. Oh God, it's costing us quite a bit of money. Let's not do that anymore. Exactly. We'll do it again when people care again
Michelle (05:29):
And they don't know how to get behind it. And so there's four main perspectives that I really thought about in wanting to talk about this topic. There's a cultural perspective, which is top. I'll talk about that first. There's a trend perspective, there's a manufacturing and sales perspective, then there's a brand perspective. Now we know it usually up in the companies from a trend perspective, they'll see that it's trending. Oh, we have to look at this, we have to think about this. And from a trend perspective, I mean what we have been seeing for the past decade, 15 years, especially from the upstart brands that have come onto the scene, polar and early days there shapes, silhouettes, have been becoming more basic kind of what I call the dry goods model where it's just, I like that. Here's a sweatshirt, here's a, here it is in three colors and it's a few sizes and it's on a shelf folded up and we don't have a dressing room.
(06:37)You just buy it. You might be able to try it on there, but you just pick it up and you use it as a piece that has tended to make people focus on the material, the quality, these pieces that, wow, that's really nice. And I just love the way it feels. It might be a very Japanese influence and you're going to take it, keep it, love it. It's been that perspective cherished items, like I said, unisex men and women like the same colors often it's not a specific gender focus that's been happening more and more over the last 10 years. And as we see right now that silhouettes have gotten looser a little more based on the nineties, people are wearing things that are bigger. More women are wearing men's clothes or buying women's clothes that are cut larger and more generous. So that's a current trend that this plays into very well. And then you get the manufacturing perspective on that, which is wow, great, fewer skews, we don't need specific, we don't have to fit to lots of different kinds of people. And what you get is a generic shape that then when the wearer puts it on, it conforms to their body in different ways and everybody wears it different. You roll it up, you cut it up. Yeah,
Colin (08:00):
I mean that's really made me just think of something is that sort of the history of fashion is so long as old as humanity and you just think about the way, I mean it wasn't that long ago women wearing corsets and accentuating the certain form and things like that. Did anyone even stop to think that actually your body shape will make this look good and if you wear a more basic sort of garment, an incredible way to look at it.
Michelle (08:25):
And now that you bring up corsets, if you go back to Coco Chanel in the tens and twenties of the last century, that's exactly what she did was she threw away the corset, brought in jerseys, she started wearing men's underwear and men's pajamas all tied up in interesting wings as evening wear. And that was a way of liberation and creating your own look. So that is something that we see here. And then in the manufacturing, it's much easier to produce more styles that they're not going to be sitting on the shelves or in the back room going on sale as much. So the manufacturing and the trend perspectives are very keen towards this idea. And what's driving that is when we go back to number one is the cultural perspective. And what we're seeing now is the diversity in the outdoor and sport industry, the gender neutrality people starting to pay more attention to all of the differences in all of us that we are not binary this or that.
(09:29)We're all of these things in between that no shape conforms. And so there's a release, there's a body positive foundation, no normal type of look. There's more acceptance in variation, unique identities, different lifestyles and different creative self presentations. And also the development of avatars and online identities where people instead can really put all kinds of creativity in creating different identities there that they're able to express themselves in so many different ways. I think that openness right now culturally is driving this willingness and the search for more gender neutral clothing that so many people can't find what they need in the women's department. They can't find what they need in the men's department because they're too polarized and there's not enough shared. And so that cultural perspective is driving it. But then what that leads us to is the brand perspective. And this is where I think these brands are having trouble.
(10:39)The brand perspective can use this as a way to differentiate and tell stories. But what I think a lot of the outdoor brands, they're trying to interject something that isn't part of their DNA yet or they don't fully understand. And I know we talked about some of the brands that are doing that really well are ones that aren't making it. A little capsule collection over here, a little capsule collection over there. I mean, one of the ones that when I looked on the Prana site, it was a meager little few pieces that were all deeply cut on sale and they weren't specifically wonderful pieces. They were retro pieces from their history and they weren't desirable pieces necessarily. Ones that you would grab and go, oh, I want to make that mine. That's a great basic or a great piece. They were a little bit too much of a niche statement piece.
Colin (11:41):
Ultimately that's just becoming then a box checking exercise, right? It's like let's create a few things so we can say we're doing it. Which kind of back to my original question about how sincere is this, but what you just laid out is really fascinating because unlike other, just to make it the most basic thing, the integration of social and business, when you talk about the DEI front and the sustainability front where it's hard to do those things, whether it's going to make something greener or how do you actually effectively kind of improve a situation on a diversity front, what you just laid out is actually, this is not only a response to what's happening with younger folks and the way people are just shopping in general, regardless how they identify personally, it's good business, it's actually going to cost you probably less money to make stuff doing it this way.
(12:31)And you have an entire generation of folks who are starting to look at it this way. I mean, I have it in my house. I have an 18-year-old who today she went to school and she had on one of my old flannels with a little crop top because crop tops are coming back now. See now we're moving out of the nineties into the early two thousands. But then she also has literally a sweater that used to be my 87-year-old dad's from he got in 1989 or something that she just, it's frumpy and baggy and she wears that around as well. And she frankly looks great no matter what it is that she's wearing. And it, it's a huge opportunity to actually, the way after listening to you kind of laid that out.
Michelle (13:09):
And there's another thing I thought about in this process of that because I did that same thing in the eighties growing up. We did a lot of vintage shopping. The stores were full of sixties, fifties, seventies stuff. We didn't
Colin (13:23):
Seventies. I imagine if you kept some of that stuff, you'd be like selling it for thousands at this point, right? Oh
Michelle (13:26):
Yeah. You can't even find that in the stores now because they get, the vintage stores always have the stuff that is just 10, 20, 30 years before and then it gets bought out. The stuff that's 10 years before nobody wants is too soon. It's still the rejects. So there's a cycle. And I think one of the things is for one to understand for the outdoor and the sport industry, the sizing in the manufacturing. Now, if you think about sports and outdoor gear in the fifties, sixties, seventies even, it was really geared towards men. And when women want, because mostly men were doing that, women were trying to do that. It was starting to happen, it was early days, but they weren't yet a full market. So women bought the small versions of all the men's product and made it their own look, which was also things that happened in the forties and the thirties, women, mountaineers and whatnot, had a lot of, wore a lot of men's clothes because women weren't allowed to really wear pants early in those days either.
(14:26)So they had to wear men's pants. So understanding that those early brands, like if you wanted to do sports, you'd buy the sweatpants from champion or shorts from Fila or the Adidas tracksuit. You got whatever you could get and you made it fit, you made it work. So the sizing ranges were still very, very small. The next phase after that, there's four phases of this and we've kind of come circle is then we started getting into the eighties and nineties. And in the nineties is when I became a strong part of the outdoor industry is women specific. And that's when you saw Lulu Athleta, all of those brands start to pop up and become very women focused. And yoga came back on
Colin (15:09):
The scene, four way stretch becomes a thing,
Michelle (15:11):
Four-way stretch, contouring, shaping. And so you see this big push for making outdoor gear not look so frumpy and boxy for women. And that becomes a big gender split and it increases sales because women become huge buyers of this product and start driving the growth of these companies. So that's the next phase of sizing. So manufacturing gets more complicated, many more skews. Then you get kids, the market for kids going, okay, well now that's a whole new market. We want to get the next generation of outdoor, so we're going to put in money towards our kids' lines. And then after that, the fourth wave was plus sizes and plus sizes in kids started coming around the same time. I worked on a lot of early plus size stuff at Columbia Sportswear in the early two thousands. And that was a big initiative of plus size collections and how to design for different shaped bodies, not just grading everything up but creating whole new skews. So then you've got a whole new level of skews and huge size range of people, especially when you think about globally from really small to very large. And it gets enormous. And now we've come full circle to the fifth phase now is basically a full circle embrace of a gender neutral head, back to simplicity, simpler, fewer skews. But this time it's not from a male perspective, it was at phase one. It's from a human perspective, how do we tackle it for humans? So that's the difference. So anyway.
Colin (16:56):
Well no, I think for anyone listening to this and listen, it's an outdoor podcast. So this podcast unfortunately skews very male, older male and and if you see that headline, what does that mean exactly? What does that look like? And you have in your head what clothing is supposed to look like because it's been reinforced for 40 plus years at this point. But if you do a little research, I put in our outline digging around at some folks who were doing this outside the outdoor space and I found an article on a website called The Good Trade, and it was featuring general neutral clothing at different brands. I could not get over how just amazing everything looked. And they had male models, female models, they had trans models they had and all for the different brands and just different sizes and it accentuated all the different types of clothing, looked incredible on everyone. You didn't ever get the sense of, oh, that looks weird on a man or a woman. It's like that just looks good. And I think that is a huge takeaway from all of this is it's that actually maybe it's something we've probably been missing for a long time that just thinking to your point, solve for the human form, not the gender. And it's actually going to result in probably a lot of better fashion trends in the future.
Michelle (18:09):
Well, it's just like you were saying that it's how you present it, it's how you tell the story and looking through those brands, I mean backline, you're right. They're the only one I've seen the first and only so far that I know about that instead of saying sizing or men's, they're talking straight in contour. Do you want t-shirts, clothes, whatever, based on a straight silhouette or do you want the contoured version? And it's not saying that, and there's plenty of all kinds of males out there. You don't have to be, it can be of any persuasion of any focused lifestyle that would wear the contoured version based on their body type and their body shape and what they want to present. And so they're the only ones I've seen do that. But what you get are, like we said, the dry goods model, they had what EEG two Good was on there. It's very similar. Uniqlo is doing it. Luigi used to do it and they're not doing it anymore. But Andrea Westerland with her brand Westerland is doing it with you go in and you see the Grames that she has in there's name
Colin (19:21):
Heard in a while. That's a good point. Amichi was probably a little ahead of the kind of basic blocky anybody can wear it style. That was back in the nineties and early two thousands.
Michelle (19:30):
It reminds me of doing martial arts, kungfu karate uniforms. We lived in them. We didn't have male and female versions, we just all wore what we wore and we developed it, we put it together how we wanted to. And the way Andrea Westerland puts it on her site too is that maybe two or three colors of Gramme pants and they're in the women's section. They're in the men's, and they don't say men's or women's, they're the same skews. They just show in that category. So you can go there and see the same thing. You get what industry of all nations older brother were ones that are doing similar, but they're using dead stock, so they're doing more interesting things. You get what Loverboy by Charles Jeffrey Tel Far big logo wear. So it's kind of pulling on the sport and Adidas look denim and crossover brands for like Tomboy X and Wild Fang and Kieran and Finch suiting and lifestyle wear.
(20:30)But when you look at ones like REI and Smart Wool and Prana and John J, I didn't even see anything left, but they all REI didn't really notice, but Smart Wall and Prana were all reeling back. You could tell that they're on the out. They're sitting there on the sale racks and they're not putting them into their categories just in the mix. But then if you look at that and you can see the difference between the brands that you're saying they look amazing. Well, they're making amazing button up wool shirts. They're making great pull on pants. They're making T-shirts in amazing colors and fabrics, not in these intimate poly blends and things that you're going to wear out and toss in a couple of years, but in things that are going to patina and get better over time and they're going to keep 'em for 10 years and pass 'em on. And that's not what the outdoor industry has been based on lately I worked in outerwear, but outerwear is that way. You keep those things for years and years and years, but that's going to have to change too because of all the chemicals. P,
Colin (21:41):
Do you want to talk about PF pfas for a minute?
Michelle (21:43):
Oh my God, I don't want to go there. But then there's the model of fewer better things, which is, that's the other thing we've all been talking about that buy less things and that doesn't sound great to companies that already that are selling 300, $400 jackets, which actually probably should be more than that based off of old time standards. But I was thinking about the example of the Nipsey right now. This is a through line for the last 30 years that seems to keep living and having this existence. And from 1996 to about 2006, for the first 10 years, you had that original boxy jacket that all men, so
Colin (22:31):
I have an bit small, the vest, the lote, or is it all the nsi? But I had the vest, I still have it upstairs. I got an EMS in 1997. It is so long and boxy and awesome. Hang onto it. Yeah. Oh no, I'm I'm not getting rid of that. Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you.
Michelle (22:47):
Yeah, no, no, hang on to that one. No, I mean hang onto to the style. But yeah, the vest eventually turned into the Nipsey vest. I think there was a Lottie, but by the time I got there it was just the Nipsey vest to capitalize on the name. But for that 10 years there you have that piece that eventually they introduced a woman's version over time and then that was still kind of boxy. Then when I got to the north face, I was in the next 10 year phase 2007 to now 2017 was the gender focus, the real split. How do we keep the men's as the men's and update that and make the women's, the women's and it really rose sales. But we are going through a period of that time where everyone was contouring everything. Nobody wanted the boxy version, but the boxy versions didn't get thrown away. They kind of got put into closets. And then when we get the retro version, people start pulling them out because they're tired of all the fitted ones. So recently 2018 now to about 28, I'm sure we're sitting here with the retro the redo, which now is north face's, big push cropped versions, this version, everything's boxy. And in about five years we're going to start seeing them contour up again in a new way. Right.
Colin (24:08):
Well that'll be interesting to see. To your point about the trend cycle when things start getting smaller again and form fitting again, how does that line up against, I mean I assume your point, if you're still designing to the body, you can have plenty of form fitting small stuff and it can remain unisex. You can have both things.
Michelle (24:27):
But this is also a thing that we understand when we study the history of fashion and design is that hemlines rise and fall and silhouettes go in and out and go hourglass and then bubble. And they do this in a fashion that's like breathing and usually in line with the economy. So it's going to be interesting because usually when the economy is booming, you see things get bigger because there's more fabric and people feel looser and crazier. And when it's slimed down, people get more constricted has been the past. But those Nipsey styles are still around. People keep them, they repair them, they've had a cachet. So to me, this is a brand correct focus, meaning the north face has stayed true to its brand all the way through no matter how they changed it. And so when I think about going into unisex or unisex sizing for these new brands or the existing ones, they have to go in and look at their own DNA and go, how does this fit? And look at these fashion brands and go, well, if I want to have a unisex, you don't have to call it a unisex and show that you're doing it because these other brands aren't doing that. Just put it in the women's. Put it in the men's. Exactly. And talk about the silhouette and let people buy it. But they're like, what are we going to call it? Size washing greenwashing.
Colin (26:02):
Right,
(26:04)That's a good point. The sizing equivalent of greenwashing. So I guess the last thing I want to ask you, and we can wrap up, is there any significance to REI driving this conversation and not, maybe they're not driving it. This is the first, I had seen this conversation come up sort of in outdoor channels and I thought it was interesting that it was on i's blog, REI catches a lot of strays. We tend to really favor the specialty independent stores and things like that, but they also do a lot. They're allowed, they're able to scale a lot of topics. I was in an REI around the holidays doing something and you look on the wall, the local REI and who they partner with and they're expanding the DEI efforts into the outdoors and the sustainability and the LGBTQ plus conversation in a world that has historically, those conversations have not been held and they can do that more so than an independent specialty store can. So I just found it fascinating. They're like, oh, unis exercising on re's blog. This wasn't in another industry trade rag or something like that. So do you feel like there's some significance there?
Michelle (27:05):
Absolutely. And I actually think this is where REI is. I would expect it from them. I would expect them to lead this. I think they should. They've done a great job over decades now of they create community, they connect to the community. And I know a lot of people that have worked in and out of REI in different capacities and they are able to provide a platform for new young brands, capsule collections in a really great space on their floors in the right stores. I've seen them do that where they create capsule collections and little shops within the shops, the concept shops, they can do that. They can tell story very well. And a lot of their customers, their customer base is looking for, they're looking for the typical things they always want and always want to be able to find, but they're also looking for them to lead to new product. What's new out there in all of this gear. It's a big ask to know that much about all the gear and all the brands. And they've always seemed to do it. When they have the right people in the right places and empower them to try new things, they can do it without damage to their brand because they're more of a community than a specific brand, even though they do have their own label too. They
Colin (28:38):
Do. And this is maybe a case where the independents can see something and learn from REI as well because they do have the scale and the breadth and they have stores across the country and have a larger presence and can say, oh, this is what's happening. It's easier for them to sort of adapt to something maybe happening more in the fashion world than again an independent retailer could. So yeah, good
Michelle (28:58):
Point. And I do think that if they go out there and put it in select stores, it gets people's attention. Wow, REI is putting it here. They can push the boundaries a little bit and without a huge, huge risk to themselves. And as long as they keep staying community oriented and also take care of these brands, because we've seen instances where that doesn't always happen too. And this is a learning place in the cultural perspective. We're learning. There's older generations that are maybe struggling more with this and there's younger generations that really want to embrace it. And the non-binary thing is threatening to a lot of the old stereotypes and what it means to be a man or what it means to be a woman in these outdoor arenas. And being tough. It's challenging all of us culturally, and we're in earlier stages of it. And I think if we embrace it and learn from it, and that's what all of this is part of. So I applaud every brand that's trying and I would encourage them to keep trying in different ways and learning from each other.
Colin (30:12):
Alright, well we can wrap it up there. So what's coming up with structure and the podcast if you've been pumping out episodes lately?
Michelle (30:19):
Yeah, we were a bit on hiatus on that as I needed to get a few other things in place. And so I had a couple of interviews already stacked away, and so we started moving that out. I'm probably going to be a biweekly because the long form podcast is really important to me. It's really important right now in our slow economy to have that balance of shorter content and longer, deeper conversations. And so those take a little longer with all the other things that I want to do as well. So having some great music ones with Lenise Benton Blondie's Auto American album, digging into that was super fun for us. Gen X older folks and talking to Stanley Suarez about being front of house sound for mega death and bands like that is a passion for me. I like to talk to people who are behind the scenes on what we create.
(31:12)And so talking with my old colleague, Dan Trapp, who went from sales in the outdoor industry into podcasting and coaching and mentoring, was a huge, huge connection to go back to that and see that we're both really pushing on the same thing about focusing on people right now and building that a new media around outdoor like you are as well. So those things have been really fun. I've got some more coming, lots more on the way that I'm currently working on, but we're also going to be showing up at some trade shows. The functional fabric fair is coming up in April, and I will be doing a talk on stage. I'm going to do a TED style talk about knowing yourself about digging in and understanding who you are. Brands can use this tool as well. And then I've brought in an old colleague from Columbia Sportswear who also worked at Nike and Adidas, Daniela Kane, who is now a coach, a career and creative coach. And so she's going to share some tools there. So we're going to go right into the show and share some tools on that and probably also do a couple little events and parties there. And then focusing on Substack. I want to get back to writing. I've got some articles in a book I'm working on. Well,
Colin (32:36):
If anybody's listening in and interested in that, we'll definitely have in the show notes, links so you can check it all out and get signed up and subscribed to your pod and the substack and keep tabs on the book that's coming. Apparently everybody, let's say ready for the book. But thank you so much for coming on. You're really, yeah, I know, right? Thank you so much for coming on and talk about this topic though. I really appreciate it. You coming on again?
Michelle (32:56):
Yeah. Thank you for having me. This has been a great one to dig into and get reacquainted with to see where it's at and see how important it is that we pay attention to it.
Colin (33:07):
All right, well that's the show for today, but before you leave, please be sure you hit that follow button so you know that you are subscribed to the rock fight. And leave us at fart five star review if you want to. It's just nice. If you do guys, just please have a five star review. The Rock Fight is a production of rock Fight LLC for Michelle Rose. I'm Colin True. And here to take us out is the mayor of Rock View himself. Krista Makes with the rock Fight Fight song. We'll see you next time. Rock fighters. Rock fight,
Chris DeMakes (33:31):
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