In a strangely serendipitous turn of events yesterday, I was switched on to an Australian outdoor brand a few short hours after having watched a film set in the Australian outdoors.
The film was Apex, starring Charlize Theron and Taron Egerton doing loads of intense climbing, white-water rafting and trying to kill each other. I give it three popcorns.
Perhaps more pertinent to Proper is Mont, a brand founded in 1981 by a guy by the name of Monty, whose connection with the outdoors is deep-rooted and authentic. His story of making gear for himself and subsequently being asked by others to make for them is a familiar one. We’re used to hearing origin stories of this nature from brands in Scandinavia, United States and Canada, but Australia? This is a first as far as I can remember.
My lens on Aussie culture begins with Prisoner Cell Block H and ends with half-heard episodes of Home and Away, which is somehow still running on UK TV and is the reason I stay late at the office every day, to avoid having to endure it when I get home. Clothing-wise, there’s not a great deal from Antipodean ends that seems to have crossed over into the Northern Hemisphere, save for our friends from Goodlids. The climate is a big reason for that, obviously.
So to me at least, Mont arrives as something of a surprise package. As I’ve established, this isn’t a recent thing, it’s been around almost as long as me, which is long. I’m yet to sample their gear in person so can’t attest to its virtues first-hand, though I’ve heard more than a few good things, and I’ve got a tent I plan to use at some point this summer. So rather than talk about products I’ve only seen, I thought I’d instead dive a little deeper into their heritage.
As you’d expect from an Australian brand, Mont (and Monty) takes itself seriously only some of the time. That endears it to us even more.
We’ll report back once we’ve put their tent to the test, but in the meantime you’ll almost certainly want to take a look at their offering here.
