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How One Guy Changed Winter Fashion Forever
Canada Goose, The North Face, and Patagonia dominate the outdoor clothing world, and they owe all of that to one man. They also owe it to the invention of polyester fleece. One man who, in 1936, on a trip with his fishing buddy, on the way back to his car, fell against a tree and almost froze to death before firing two shots in the air to alert his best friend he was going to die.
That man’s name is Edward Bauer. Without Eddie Bauer, there would be no Patagonia down jackets, North Face jackets, or Canada Goose. But funny enough, we will briefly touch on today how Canada Goose got so good at making jackets that they learned how to from Eddie Bauer and then did it better and made jackets for Eddie Bauer.
I love Eddie Bauer because he was nuts and extreme, and I like extreme nuts. When he made a down-fill sleeping bag, down known to be incredibly light, he made it weigh 18 lbs.
Today, we will be telling the story of the first ever down jacket, the 1937 Skyliner by Eddie Bauer, and how it actually made brands like Patagonia, The North Face, Canada Goose, and everything else that we know today. Although the story is amazing, I also think it got exaggerated over the years, and frankly, it’s full of lies and myths.
I’m going to do my absolute best to be a myth buster today because that show got canceled, I think, because a cannonball flew into someone’s house during an experiment. It wasn’t even on purpose. Also, in the ’30s, ’40s, ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s, a lot of down jackets were made using a material that I think most hikers today would not wear because they’d be afraid that it would kill them.
Myth #1: Eddie Bauer Invented the Down Jacket
What’s up, everyone, it’s Michael! I love this weather. I’m pretty excited about that. The temperature is cooling down, and I’m wearing down jackets – what could be better than that? Let’s talk about the Eddie Bauer Superior Down Parka.
The first myth is that Eddie Bauer invented the down jacket. The first down jackets recorded were in 18th century Russia, and the boob octagon thing in the front there is full of Eiderdown, which is one of the warmest and rarest down fills that you could possibly get. Also, the Ainu people, who are indigenous to the island of Hokkaido, wore seabird down jackets, and they kept the down in the jackets, I think, with the skins of the birds.
Eddie Bauer didn’t invent the down jacket technically, but he popularized it. Nobody was walking around wearing giant fur coats or seabird skins regularly before that – they were all wearing wool. Interestingly, although he invented the down jacket – oops, I did just go on a pedantic rant saying that you can’t say invented and then immediately said invented. I’ll replace the word “invented” with “popularized,” sorry about that.
What Eddie Bauer really wanted to protect was the diamond shape because down runs into some issues when you stuff it inside of a jacket, and he wanted to fix that. We’ll read some accounts from people who tried this jacket for the first time in 1937 and see what they had to say later.
Pt. 1: How He Pulled It Off
So in 1936, Eddie Bauer ordered 25 lbs of goose down, enough, I guess, to make almost two of his sleeping bags. And you may be thinking, “Michael, how did Eddie Bauer know where to find 25 lbs of goose down?” Well, he also invented the shuttle cock. He took the 25 lbs of goose down, brought it to a seamstress, and said, “Hey, can you put this down in this material and make it a quilt jacket?”
I assume that the seamstress said yes; otherwise, Eddie Bauer probably left out the part where she said no, and Eddie was like, “Why?” She’s like, “I just don’t feel like doing that. I’m actually really behind with all these other things that aren’t weird, and I think you should take your business somewhere else.”
And then he said, “Fine! I think I’ll take it down the street,” and that seamstress said, “Hey Eddie, how’s it going?” He said, “I’m not having that good of a day today because Betsy is being a real piece…” They either left that part out, or the first seamstress said yes, and then the first jackets were made.
It was 25 lbs of down, so that’s obviously more than one jacket. Eddie made a bunch of jackets. His wife tried it out, and they have a very cute story where he said his wife is his greatest outdoor companion, which is adorable. Eddie was concerned more about the diamond quilted patterns. Number one, down is very puffy, so if I just filled this jacket up without the sewing all throughout it, it would be a huge puffer jacket.
And number two, unlike the incredibly popular insulatory (it’s a word, I think) material at the time and today even, the fabric of the jacket, unlike wool, was not the insulating part of it. What was inside the jacket was the insulating part, so you needed the quilted panels to be able to hold pockets of down in areas around your body instead of having it all fall to your bottom.
Pt. 1: Mr. Bauer’s Very Bad Day
So the true question is: people weren’t necessarily cold outside; why did they need down jackets? In fact, those 18th-century people who had the first ever down jackets in the world were mostly made out of fur. They wrote pompous essays about how warm their jackets were: “I’m sick of people asking me how the weather is because, frankly, I have no idea. It feels the same outside as it does inside. It’s like I brought the house with me.”
Down was such a big deal because of its warmth-to-weight ratio. So, while you could have a wool jacket and a down jacket to keep you the same level of warmth, the wool jacket would be way heavier than the down jacket. There were a number of drawbacks though, that I feel like Eddie Bauer conveniently kind of glosses over.
Down vs. Wool: The Great Jacket Showdown
| Product | Key Features | Historical Significance | Materials Used | Modern Influence |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Eddie Bauer Skyliner (1937) | Diamond quilted design, weight-to-warmth ratio | First mass-popularized down jacket | 25 lbs of goose down, quilted cotton shell | Inspired modern designs of Patagonia, The North Face |
| Canada Goose Down Jackets | Machine-stuffed down, durable and lightweight | Perfected down-stuffing methods in the 1970s | Nylon and synthetic blends | Set industry standards for efficiency and quality |
| Patagonia Down Jackets | Focus on sustainability and fleece integration | Adopted down after excelling with polyester fleece | Recycled and natural down fills | Combined technology with fleece innovations |
| The North Face Down Jackets | Performance-focused outdoor designs | Expanded down use in the late 1960s | Blended down and synthetic insulation | Pioneered technical outdoor gear for mass markets |
Myth #2: Wool’ll Kill You
So, we shall now venture into myth number two. Eddie Bauer was fishing with his friend. He caught a lot of fish, and he put them in a bag. Then he had to hike back to his car. He and his friend were carrying big sacks of fish on their back, as they do, and they were getting sweaty and tired because of their very heavy woolen clothes.
So they both took theirs off, and they walked around in wool undershirts and underwear back to the car. As Eddie Bauer was walking back to his car, he started to catch hypothermia and slow down until he dropped down by a tree. You would assume he was going to die, but thankfully, he pulled out his pistol, he fired two shots in the air, his friend came to save him, and so is history – he survived.
Colin Berg, the historian at Eddie Bauer, says he realized what he needed was a really breathable warm jacket that he wouldn’t have to take off when he was working strenuously in the cold. In general, wool garments fit the bill that Colin Berg is describing better than down jackets – they’re more breathable, you could wear them during work and all that. I don’t know how the wool jacket would have caused this; besides, it was overbuilt for the temperature that he was in.
I could be wrong, but the story seems true but that it did get rolled up more and more and more and more until it sounds like the only thing that could have saved Eddie Bauer was a down jacket, when in fact, a wool jacket would have been better for the conditions because it was getting wet, and if down gets wet it doesn’t keep you warm like wool does. A
nd I think Eddie Bauer probably thought as he was dying or when he was recovering, “I bet I could make a jacket that I would rather wear outside,” and boom – you have the 1937 Skyliner jacket.The only difference between the one I have and the real one is that there are a few differences, obviously, but the main difference is these sleeves are also down-filled; the originals were lined in alpaca.
The shame for us is that it’s hard to fully grasp how revolutionary a down jacket would have been to anyone who has never had a down jacket or held one in their lives before.
This is what people from the 1930s said about their jackets: “My husband thinks his down jacket is lit, his wool fit was mid, but this is,” no, just kidding. “My husband thinks his down jacket is the best thing that was ever made,” wrote a New Hampshire wife. And Mrs. Lee said, “I wear it every day out of doors. I didn’t buy any woolen underwear.”
People are literally saying, “Eddie, I don’t even need to wear underwear anymore!” “I didn’t buy any woolen underwear, but with this jacket on, I don’t need any underwear.” I would love to write to North Face and say your jackets are so good I’m not wearing underwear anymore.
Pt. 3 WWII
But his big break was World War II, as was, I guess, so many people’s big break in a terrible way. That is our final myth here: the B9 parka. This may not be a myth, but Eddie Bauer made the B9 parka and was allowed to put his name on it.
The myth is that the B9 parka could keep you afloat with 25 lbs of gear on your back if you were to fall in the water. That’s obviously – that’s not how down jackets work. That is a myth unless he was allowed to insert personal flotation devices somewhere in the jacket. So now Patagonia, North Face, and Canada Goose are about to enter the scene.
Pt. 4 The Big Boys Are Here
Originally, the outside shell of the Eddie Bauer Superior Down Parka was made out of cotton, and it had Expedition cloth, like the 1970s Eddie Bauer that I have – 100% Egyptian cotton twill, which nowadays people that are actually out in the elements all day would probably be like, “No way am I wearing cotton outside.”
And now we use a nylon blend, but Eddie Bauer, the man, was apparently so worried about durability and was unsure that nylon was as strong as cotton because it was so lightweight that it took him a very, very long time to accept that his jackets could be made out of nylon, and even then it was a nylon cotton blend.
Canada Goose says it’s because it will allow your jacket to patina over time, but I don’t think that’s what a Canada Goose customer wants. I think the real reason is nylon. Although it’s way stronger than cotton at a lighter weight, it doesn’t breathe, and Eddie Bauer wanted a breathable, lightweight jacket, and if you cover yourself in plastic, it’s worse.
Pt. 5 Master Goose
As I said before, down jackets are great, but the toughest part about them is stuffing them evenly so there are no cold spots. Eddie Bauer was good at that, but the traditional method was stuffing the pockets of cotton or whatever they were filling with down by hand. Canada Goose changed that – they essentially made a machine that did it for you, but better.
I think they called it the down stuffing machine, and it just blew the down into the jacket. They got so good at it that they essentially started making jackets for everybody else.
That machine that Canada Goose invented in the ’70s – could be the late ’60s – was vital for virtually every other brand that was making down jackets to be able to do it cost-effectively and to honestly probably go through Canada Goose for the most part. And that is how we had the birth of North Face in the late ’60s and then Patagonia in the early ’70s.
Eddie Bauer invented (popularized) the jacket in the 1930s, Canada Goose perfected the methods of production in the 1970s, Patagonia and The North Face, who were largely famous for the polyester fleece garments – then started to jump into the down jacket space, combined some of their technologies, and boom – that is how we have the modern down jacket.
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Wrapping Up
That’s all for the Eddie Bauer Superior Down Parka. I hope you’re all doing well! I will talk to you all very soon. Enjoy the weather!
This article was adapted from Michael Kristy’s video on The Iron Snail, with edits from FashionBeans, and was reviewed by Michael to ensure the integrity of his original content. Watch the full video here.
The Iron Snail is a men’s fashion vlog (and now article series!) starring a young man named Michael and featuring a snail no bigger than a quarter. The two are set on taking over the world of fashion by creating a clothing line to end all clothing lines. Until then, we’re here to tell you EVERYTHING you need to know about the best clothing out there, from the highest quality raw denim jeans to the warmest jackets to the sturdiest boots…the Iron Snail has got you covered.