Goose Down, and the Seattle Man Who Put It in a Jacket
Goose Down, and the Seattle Man Who Put It in a Jacket
It started with a cold night on the Olympic Peninsula. Ninety years later I made the vest I always wanted.
A cold night on the Olympic Peninsula
In the winter of 1935 a Seattle sporting goods man named Eddie Bauer went fishing on the Olympic Peninsula. He got wet, he got cold, and he came very close to not coming back. He remembered a story about an uncle who had survived a Manchurian winter in a coat lined with goose down.
He already knew feather suppliers, because he had patented a badminton shuttlecock. So he bought twenty five pounds of goose down, took it to a seamstress with a bolt of cloth, and asked for something nobody in the city had seen. In 1936 it went into production. It was the first quilted down jacket made in America, and the oldest surviving one sits in a museum here in Seattle.
That happened four miles from where I sit. Every down jacket on earth is downstream of that trip.
Why down works
A down cluster is not a feather. It has no stiff central quill. It is a three dimensional puff of filaments that spring out in every direction and hold still air in the spaces between them. Still air is the insulation. The down is just the scaffold that keeps it there.
That is why nothing beats it for warmth against weight. A vest full of good down weighs almost nothing and holds a pocket of your own heat around your core.
Baffles
Down migrates. Left alone in an open jacket it slides to the bottom and you end up warm at the hem and cold at the shoulders. Quilting solves it. The stitched lines divide the jacket into small chambers, and each chamber holds its share and keeps it where you put it. It is a simple idea and it is why quilted jackets look the way they look.
Ours
I spent three decades in the Pacific Northwest, on mountains and in winter, and I knew exactly what I wanted before I ever drew it. It took years to get there and it is made entirely in Japan.
The shoulder yoke is vegetable tanned hide from Himeji, which has been a great leather town for centuries. The fill is silver quality goose down, the highest grade on the market. The shell is a 4.8 ounce nylon ripstop, water repellent, made in Japan. The lining is a 3.6 ounce Taslan nylon with a durable water repellent finish, also made in Japan.
It closes with Black Bear Brand YKK snaps and a vintage Talon two way zipper. There is a Black Bear Brand Commander tag at the inner neck. It comes in Desert and in Indigo.
A Way Of Life.
Shop the Story
Black Bear Brand Goose Down Vest, Desert
Black Bear Brand Goose Down Vest, Indigo
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