Patagonia is one of those brands that has been infinitely cool since its conception way back in the 1970s.
This is contributed largely by the company historically ignoring what ‘cool’ is, focusing solely on producing equipment and clothing that serves a purpose, whether that be climbing, fishing, hiking or kayaking.
When brands decide to put functionality at the forefront of their designs, this can sometimes come at the expense of other features, namely how ‘fun’ the garments are.
And that sort of makes sense – traditionally when outdoor brands are trying to achieve the best hydrostatic head possible for a waterproof jacket, they’re hardly going to spare much time to consider such jovial elements as the colour of the coat.
This metric rings true for most serious outdoor brands – but never Patagonia.
Ever since Yvon Chouinard started out making outdoor clothing he made certain to adorn his highly technical garments in beautifully bright colours & patterns. No item is there a better case study for this than the humble fleece – a garment that Patagonia has released in countless renditions and played a huge role in the advancement of.
In praise of the Patagonia perennial, we’ve put together a complete chronological history of the brand’s most important fleeces of all time – we’ll be detailing Deep Pile, Synchilla, Polypropylene,- the lot.
c.1975 – The Debut Pile Jacket
The one that started it all.
And also the one with one of the most interesting story.
In the 1970s climbers were still predominantly wearing woollen clothing to keep warm, and whilst the wool certainly provided in that aspect, it fell short in others. Namely, when it got wet it would weigh a ton and then took forever to dry.
Unsatisfied with this inferior product, Yvon began hunting for synthetic alternatives to construct insulating garments from, in his search he came across a fabric called acrylic pile at a textile store in Canada. The novel synthetic pile was smelly and looked crap, but showed promise in its technical properties – it was hydrophobic and dried quickly
Looking to build on these revelations, Yvon instructed his wife Malinda to go to the fashion district of Los Angeles in search of similar fabrics. Malinda did just that and returned from her trip with a polyester toilet seat cover. A slightly perplexed Yvon began inspecting the product and quickly realised it had everything he wanted – it was lightweight, was not heavy when wet, dried quickly, and didn’t shrink when you washed it in a machine.
The image of the fleece above is the first ever pile fleece prototype, in all its beautiful pilled glory. There was a lot of work to be done, but Yvon & Malinda had done it, they’d created a synthetic fleece jacket.
c.1979 – Initial Reverse Pile Jacket
The second rendition of Yvon’s fleece came about when his brand was known as ‘Patagonia Software.’
The Pile Jacket 2.0 was a much more commercial version of its predecessor, and demonstrated that with the addition of branding – the first Patagonia logo to exist – colloquially known as the ‘Big Logo.’
The 1980 Pile Jacket featured the thick pile fabric on its interior as a type of lining, this kept climbers toasty and also gave the park rangers in Yosemite peace of mind that there weren’t sheep trapped on the park’s granite walls.
The pile fabric itself was imported from Malden Mills (now Polartec) as Patagonia Software partnered with them in 1979, this marked a longstanding relationship between the two brands.
c.1980 – Bunting Jacket
1980 saw Patagonia introduce the Bunting Jacket, and although it may look similar in appearance to the Reverse Pile Jacket, it was designed to be completely different.
The Bunting Jacket was more windproof than its pile alternative and weighed less, but this came at the cost of temperature regulation. These features made the Bunting Jacket popular among the more lifestyle outdoor crowd, as opposed to the climbers and mountaineers that favoured the Pile Jacket.
This garment was the first Patagonia fleece that incorporated zip pockets into its design.
c.1982 – Reverse Pile Cardigan
In 1982, Patagonia slightly modified their Reverse Pile Jacket and blended it with the Bunting Jacket, the result was the Reverse Pile Cardigan.
The Reverse Pile Cardigan introduced a chest pocket as well as adjustable Velcro on the wrists, all features with functionality at the forefront of design.
In 1982, Patagonia was still only worn by hardcore outdoor types – as demonstrated by the chum shovelling model on the left – Captain Ralph Hazard.
This rendition of the Reverse Pile Fleece is now one of the most sought-after fleece items by Patagoniacs due to its fantastic colour and extreme rarity.
c.1983 – Synchilla Fleece
In 1983, Patagonia saw the need for a new kind of fleece – a lightweight, double-sided version that would dry even faster than pile.
Yvon and co. presented the specifications to a fabric mill in North Carolina, and what they came back with would come to be one of Patagonia’s most important fabrics – Synchilla – named because it felt a bit like a chinchilla’s fur.
The Patagonia gang took their debut Synchilla fleeces on a year-long trip of testing, involving kayaking in South America, fly fishing in Wyoming and then a backpacking trip to Nepal. After the testing trip the crew were more than satisfied with the fleeces and better yet, so was the R&D department back at HQ, who had been repeatedly machine washing & drying the fleeces.
The best thing about it all?
It was the first ever fleece that was fully pill-resistant.
c.1985 – Quilted Polypropylene
The Quilted Polypropylene is the ugly duckling of the Patagonia fleece family – the odd one out, the one that never really caught on.
In 1985 Patagonia wanted a fleece that functioned the same as their bunting fleeces but was a bit lighter, and thus the Quilted Polypropylene was conceived.
It’s not often over the course of Patagonia’s history that they got the design of something wrong, but they did for the Polypropylene fleece. The garish look of the garment paired with its relatively niche ideal usage of bicycling and warming up for sports meant it never really caught on.
The Quilted Polypropylene fleece was only produced for a couple of years until Yvon decided enough was enough and canned it.
c.1985 – Synchilla Snap-T
The fleece that followed the Quilted Polypropylene Fleece couldn’t have been more different in terms of popularity though – the instantly recognisable Synchilla Snap-T.
In 1985 Patagonia realised just what a product they had in Synchilla and were desperate to repackage it in as many functional ways possible, this led to the invention of the Snap-T.
The Snap-T is one of Patagonia’s most recognisable garments to this day and due to the high volume of production, certain editions are incredibly sought after by collectors. Its distinct funnel neck and popper design make it the ideal fleece for chucking over yourself on a winter’s day or for just lounging around.
Inadvertently, Patagonia had made one of the most stylish fleece garments ever.
c.1988 – Retro Pile Cardigan
In 1988 Patagonia introduced what would come to be the most recognisable and imitated fleeces of all time – the Retro Pile Cardigan.
The stalwart of Patagonia fleeces if you ask any Patagoniac is the Retro Pile Cardigan, originally introduced in 1988. The design of the pile cardigan has been chopped and changed numerous times, not just by Patagonia, but also by other brands trying to replicate it.
The first rendition came in the Natural/French Red colourway, and it was likely due to this choice selection of tones that the fleece gained a cult following. It also helped that the deep pile construction with contrasting chest pocket could be spotted from a mile away.
Many famous people have donned a version of the Retro Pile Cardigan, but in our view, no one has worn it better than Gonzo himself – the legendary Hunter S. Thompson.
c.1991 – Reversible Glissade Pullover
In the ’90s reversible garments were starting to catch on, most of which were pretty gimmicky, but Patagonia were keen to give it a go themselves, which came in the form of the Reversible Glissade Pullover.
The Reversible Glissade Pullover utilized a more lightweight form of Synchilla fleece, this was then contrasted with the other side of the garment being a nylon ripstop.
The benefits of the Glissade besides the obvious visual ones were its extreme wind-proofing ability, and how both sides of the fabric functioned differently. This meant mountaineers and climbers could pack one garment on a trip instead of two.
The fleece provided fantastic insulation, whereas the nylon was much more cool when next-to-skin.
c.1992 – Pile Cardigan
Off the back of the popularity the Retro Pile Cardigan saw, Patagonia were keen to create a more readily available version to provide to climbers, hikers & outdoor enthusiasts across the globe – the Pile Cardigan.
The Pile Cardigan was almost identical to the Retro Pile Cardigan, the only real difference was that it didn’t have that iconic chest pocket.
Patagonia released far more Pile Cardigans than Retro Pile Cardigans and this allowed them to really catch on amongst the climbing community, especially with the dirtbags & beatniks that resided in America’s national parks, and for good reason – you didn’t really need a sleeping bag if you had a Pile Cardigan on.
c.1993 – Printed Synchilla
It only took eight years after the introduction of the Synchilla Snap-T for Patagonia to decide they weren’t fully happy with the design – it needed to be better, bolder and most importantly brighter, this caused them to print wild patterns on the cult classic in the form of a Printed Synchilla Snap-T.
Over the years Patagonia have released countless different Printed Synchilla Snap-Ts with some being incredibly sought after by collectors. Each Printed Snap-T pattern has its own unique name, the one above being called ‘Sacajawea’ and frequently fetching several hundreds of pounds on eBay.
The Printed Synchilla Snap-Ts weren’t just perceived to be fun by people of the outdoors but also by the animals of the outdoors, as pictured by the bear above.
Okay that isn’t strictly true, the bear you’re looking at was called Bart The Bear and was actually a television actor.
c.1999 – Marsupial
In the late ’90s Patagonia was beginning to become aligned with people that weren’t all that interested in the outdoors, we don’t know for sure, but it’s possible that the Marsupial Fleece was designed to appeal to this new market.
Basically, the same as the Synchilla Snap-T, the Marsupial just replaced the Snaps with a half-length zip. The Marsupial Fleece didn’t rise to the heights of its predecessor and in our view is kind of like that cousin you only see once a year – effortlessly cool, but lesser spotted.
c.1999 Retro-X
One of the most iconic modern renditions of Patagonia’s pile fleece comes in the form of the Retro-X.
At the turn of the millennia, Patagonia decided to re-design the iconic Pile Cardigan, merging it with features from the preceding Retro Pile Cardigan such as the chest pocket.
Patagonia branding was added to this pocket, and before long the Retro-X was popular with both hardcore outdoor types and lifestyle outdoor types in equal measure.
The Retro-X has been produced in countless iterations and is still made by Patagonia today.
c.1999 Regulator
Wary of Patagonia becoming aligned with non-outdoor customers, Yvon & crew decided that action had to be taken to reaffirm that the brand had no intentions outside of providing top-tier outdoor gear. This saw the introduction of the Regulator Fleece.
The Regulator fleece was to be the most technical of Patagonia’s fleece line-up, weight for weight they were warmer than Synchilla fleeces and could withstand more abuse.
The introduction of the Regulator fleece was met with great popularity, this spawned its own Regulator line. Over the years this would include different versions of Regulator fleeces such as the R1, R2 and R3 models, with each being a slightly tweaked version of the other.
c.2003 Rhythm Hoodie
As a part of Patagonia’s realignment process that took place in the early 2000s they introduced a line called Rhythm, centred around producing hardwearing and bar-tacked gear for bouldering and climbing. The frontrunner of this line was the Rhythm Hoodie.
The Rhythm Hoodie was essentially a Pile Cardigan with a hood, longer pile length and reinforced areas on the elbows and hem. All of these features were designed to withstand the trials and tribulations that came with outdoor climbing.
The Rhythm line only ran for around 7 years, until it was canned in 2006. Due to its short lifespan, pieces from the collection are highly sought after by collectors, not least the Rhythm Hoodie.
This desirability was fuelled by Frank Ocean wearing one in 2018 – his fans & many others went crazy trying to track the iconic garment down.
The result of this?
Prices for the Rhythm Hoodie skyrocketed, with some fetching north of £1000 on eBay.
c.2015 Retro Pile Quarter Zip
The most recent notable addition to Patagonia’s fleece line-up comes in the form of the Retro Pile Quarter Zip.
Another edition of a pile fleece I hear you ask? Yes, they’re just that good we’ll never get bored of them. This recent version halves the full length zip, sort of like a Marsupial crossed with a Pile Cardigan.
Patagonia has gone on to make even more different types of fleeces, but we haven’t got enough hours in the day to cover them, so we’ll just go with the narrative that James May wore a Retro Pile Quarter Zip and after that, no one ever wanted to wear Patagonia again.
Only joking, James May is a bit of a lowkey style icon.
If you’ve made it this far, you should reward yourself with one of the very things you’ve been reading about. Shop Patagonia fleeces from some of our friends at Outsiders Store here, or straight from the source here.
We’d also like to say a big thank you to vintage Patagonia specialists, Old School Outdoor for providing permission to use their images for this article.
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