Fall | Winter in the mind of RMFB

To experience autumn in a cold country is something spectacular, a sudden shift and everything changes into a well-orchestrated show for everyone to take part in. It directs the sound, the smell, even the air around you - it becomes calmer and more collected.

For the Rocky Mountain brand this show has been playing for 53 years, and every year that feeling of change is somewhat conflicting…

You see, with legacy comes responsibility, towards that history but also towards the future – and our future is ever more apparent that it is in sustainability. With this in mind we had plenty of ways to achieving this, so what did we do?

We hired a Danish designer named Isabell, she is awesome and creative with a passion for sustainable craft. We sat down and opened the book of Fall Winter 2020 with “?” written all over it. Every time you open a blank page is really intriguing because you never know where you will end up. Is this the year that we scrap everything and start making horse-saddles for toddlers, or is this the year we become a coffee bean grinder company? At some point there was an actual sketch of a saddle, I might have to post that sometime.

Well however awesome horse saddles for toddlers sound it would be terribly sad to put the down vest to rest. So naturally, we did what a real cowboy company would do, we made a 70’s cover of ourselves! But you know – contemporary.

So where do we draw inspiration from?

As stated above we are doing a throwback to the 1970s, that was clear quite early in the process. The shape of our garment was also done, since the vest has it’s roots in the 70’s:ish. So, what we had left was details, materials and the approach to our new selves – the modern aware person, right?

The materials part is really exciting, the fact that we could remove any water repellent coating from our Nylon weave and to use 100 % recycled Nylon, but still keep it water repellent and durable feels great, it also lets in more air for the down to trap and the moisture is more easily ventilated out of the down canals which leaves you with a garment that will hold up to the test of time even better. For our down filling RDS certification was a must, I needed that reassurance to sleep at night. While we can do more things forward with our down selection. The leather was a classic, we opted out of chromium use. This gives the leather a more natural aging process and the patina will be fantastic, also the environmental aspect of this was a big plus.

Since most of you reading this do not know us personally yet, it might be useful to know what makes the mind go round. The easy answer is everything, and the more complicated version is that everything lies in the details… Let me explain.

Have you ever seen been up close to a well-worn gold watch, a wedding ring, or something in that fashion? Cared for by a person and used a lot. That is where the brushed surface of our brass snaps came from. Still golden, but not in a flashy sense – more a caring last you forever kind of sense.

When it comes to colours, autumn contrast was the way to go. Green trees begin to fade into yellow, orange and even bright red – colours you find throughout our collection. However, our Oyster Grey vest has a little story:

I was out walking our dog one morning by the water – she loves to swim so that is what you do. The fog was thick like icecream over the water and the dog began to bark out at sea, and out of this icecream textured fog came a ship, a blue ship that you could barely make out the contours of, full on ghost ship from sins passed was over me. Nearly gave me a heart attack, but the contrast of this heavy fog and this light blue ship stuck like a picture in my mind – and there you go. Oyster Grey.

The comeback of the decade. My dad kept pretty much everything since the 1970s. A personality that matches up great with being a poor seasonal worker in the mountains, these big fleece parkas, and a down vest here and there. These are fond style memories from 10 years ago, and now when Fleece and Teddy garments are on the rise, the comeback of the 70’s and 80’s you could say, these memories sprung into light. Rocky Mountain Vests with mouton collars is a great feat of design, but when you have a fleece that looks like your mouton collar… It became cluttered. So, we opted out of the mouton collar for now and left it clean with the inner colour to shine. Makes it easy to wear another structured garment underneath, which I find to be a great thing.

 These are some thoughts that went into the FW2020 collection, all that came to mind at this very moment. However I was thinking of making this into a little series, if you all find any joy in reading this sort of thing. Just leave a comment below if there is anything in particular you want to know more about, aswell do leave a comment if you want a second blog about the creative process. 

We hope you will find as much joy and use of your Featherbed as we had fun making it.

//RMFB design & production team