Australian Hiker

Way back in the ‘before times’ if you wanted to purchase gear for your hiking adventures you would visit a local Scout store or an army disposal store. I can remember clearly going into the Canberra Scout Store as a teenager with a parent and purchasing my first real tent (nylon) and external frame aluminium and nylon pack at great expense. In fact in today’s terms the pack alone would cost $958.00! How things have changed.

These days we have no end of purchasing options from nationally branded stores and well known standalone specialists. In addition over the past couple of years in particular we are seeing international branded stores entering the retail market including The North Face, Arcteryx, and Patagonia. These stores have come into existence for two main reasons. The first being outdoor retailers, who would often cherry pick well known items from major brands but leave the bulk of the range alone. This forced the hand of these big manufacturers to set up their retail stores so as to promote their full ranges to a public that unless they were gear freaks weren’t familiar with a lot of what was on offer overseas.

The second reason has been the rise of outdoor gear as a fashion item and this is what the remainder of this article focuses on.

Arcteryx Canberra store

The North Face store in Canberra

Outdoor gear didn’t jump straight to being a fashion statement. Before that occurred we had an in-between stage of recreational gear as fashion items. And by this I’m talking about gym gear including active wear and sports shoes. Stores like Lululemon really pushed this trend and it’s now very common to see, women in particular, in shopping centres and at cafes wearing gym gear. In fact we now have ‘unofficial rules’ about how long you are supposed to wear gym gear before you change into day wear. But I do see, and know, people who put gym gear on and head out for coffee and who have never set foot in a gym.

The whole concept of wearing this gear is to make a statement about yourself that you are healthy and you go to the gym even if that’s not the case. As my wife Gill says its also about the comfort. In addition as an adult male I have no qualms about women wearing gym gear in public and as revealing as much of today’s gear is (think scrunch leggings), I still think that some of the gym gear from the 1990’s and early 2000’s was more revealing (think Eric Prydz – Call On Me Ministry of Sound released in 2004) – while not commonly seen in public in Australia it was definitely more of a trend in the USA but was also apparent here to a lesser extent.

Fitness shoes are another good example of sports gear that has come to make a fashion statement with companies like Nike and Addidas turning a sports shoe into a fashion icon. In Australia, we had the Dunlop Volleys that came to the market in 1924 and have hardly changed in appearance since then (see below) and even in 2026 are still readily available with minimal change. In the late nineties and early 2000’s, sales of these shoes exploded becoming a cultural trend:

“In 1999, Dunlop Volleys were the hottest item with Australia’s hippest teens, dubbed by Ken Hanvey as ‘one percenters’ or ‘out there kids.’ Product adoption by this group began in the underground rave or music scene in Sydney and Melbourne, with consumers including disc jockeys and teen artists who were opinion leaders among fashion-conscious teenagers. They purchased the shoes at mass market discounters – in 1999–2000, Dunlop sold around 200,000 pairs of Volleys through K-Mart, Big W and ….”¹

Dunlop Volley originally released in 1924 in Australia and it looked the same for the next 60+ years

Dunlop Volley 2026. Looks the same apart from a tiny bit of colour. At one stage these shoes became a retro fashion statement

Now let’s look more specifically at outdoor gear. I think that the specific piece of gear that started pushing outdoor gear into mainstream fashion was the puffer jacket. This jacket was lightweight and warm and started the fashion trend of turning outdoor gear into a fashion item that came to be known as ‘Gorpcore’.

“Gorpore refers to technical adventure clothing and accessories that are worn in a fashion setting. ‘Gorp’, it goes on to explain, stands for ‘good old raisins and peanuts’. Yes, that’s the trail mix you might take hiking.”²

In 2015 we headed to Switzerland to do an entry level mountaineering course and the Swiss guide who taught us commented that he could always tell an Australian or New Zealander because they wore black down jackets. That same comment is made about Canberra where we live and in mid winter black down jackets seem to be the official uniform given our cold weather.

In Australia here’s where things changed. Black down jackets were always popular although in Europe you could buy just about any colour of jacket you could think of. Enter Katmandu that started in 1987 and became really well known for bringing colour to the outdoor market in Australia which forced every other company to start bringing in more colour choices rather than just the straight black or occasional blue colour choices. For most importers ‘black’ was safe. It didn’t offend anyone so they wouldn’t be stuck with a colour that didn’t sell but it also didn’t excite anyone either.

The down jacket may have started the trend but outdoor gear has now moved into the mainstream and is worn by many people who may or may not ever go bush. In my case I live in outdoor gear and as I am writing this article my shoes, socks, pants, belt, top, hat, and even my sunglasses are all part of my outdoor clothing even though I’m not going bush today. I just find this gear to be comfortable. So much so, the oldest pants in my cupboard are ten years old and my oldest top is nine years old. If it wasn’t a warm day I would have a down jacket in my car and which one I would pick would depend on how cold it was.

I’m a bit of a ‘clothes horse’ and love to make a fashion statement in what I wear. If I could still buy the really bright coloured pants I’m wearing below, I would but these days its the camo colour that seems to be popular. For that reason I purchase my outdoor pants from the USA because I can get the extra length in the legs (34 inch) as well as the grey camo colour which isn’t imported into Australia. As a result I pay much more than I would do by buying the colours that are available in Australia.

Prana Zion Pants. This company no longer produces these lairy colours. I had people recognise me by these pants due to their colour

My current ‘go to’ pants Kuhl Radikl in Grey Camo. I order these from the USA due to their leg length and colour which I can’t get in Australia.

Final Thoughts

By far the most common piece of outdoor ‘uniform’ that you see is the down jacket but many wearers will never set foot on a hiking trail. The outdoor gear we as hikers love so much has, like gym gear and running shoes, become mainstream. In doing so we now have a wider choice in the cut, fit, and colour that is on offer and that’s not a bad thing.

While our recreational activity has been co-opted by mainstream fashion trends, the upside is that the market has grown allowing manufacturers and suppliers to produce a wider range of options that can only be a good thing.

So whether you like the idea or not, outdoor gear is now a fashion item and so long as manufacturers continue to produce specialist and technical versions, should we really be upset by this trend?

Resources

1. Slowing the adoption and diffusion process to enhance brand repositioning: The consumer driven repositioning of Dunlop Volley
2. How the functional down jacket became a menswear staple

Publishing date

28 September 2026

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