I also heard from Paragon that Patagonia is seeing a lot more action this season than it has for several years. She attributed it to stronger design that looked much better and was getting noticed by the customer. In NYC, and Paragon, I also believe it has a lot to do with the sales people on the floor. In my experience when the staff there gets "behind" something they sell the hell out of it. You don't have to listen in on too many conversations between the customer and the staff, to realize that a good majority of people who shop at Paragon rely very heavily on the staff to guide them in their purchases.
One of the stand out styles for me from Patagonia on their floor was the Women's Powder Bowl at $400.
The fit of this jacket is super sleek, when I put it on it was by far my favorite of all the ones that I tried on, I did find the fit much larger than most brands though so I had to size down to an X-Small for it to fit properly. The collar and hood were comfortable and very functional, A+++. I checked out more about this one on the internet and found out that it is a "green" jacket, the outershell is a stretch 2.5 Layer using a recycled 150 Denier 100% poly with their H2No Waterproof Breathable Barrier.
The jacket is then lined with a 100% recycled stretch polyester taffeta (now I know why it still felt so good even when I bent my arms and wrapped them around my shoulders) and....it is insulated with their light and compressible Thermogreen (90% recycled) insulation. This is a dreamy combination!
There were plenty of other good pieces on the floor but the final standout for me was a style from Icebreaker, the Women's Chelsea Hood 340 for $249.00, youch, that's a lot for a long sleeve wool sweater type of piece!
Part of what appealed to me was the length, so many brands in the outdoor industry are way too short in their layering for women, the trend in sportswear is long lengths, and somehow it's been slow to catch on for outdoors. (This by the way was very evident at Marmot, almost every women's layering piece looked so short, and therefore to me instantly dated them.) I was shopping with another design friend and we both agreed the Chelsea Hooded was very nice but the one deal breaker was the waistband. For some reason they designed in a waistband with partial drawcord, we couldn't see any advantage to this with all the amazing stretch in the fabric, but there was a major disadvantage, the band was very bulky and looked like they had a hard time keeping the curves in it from stretching out during production. We loved the entire style, but this one thing was enough for most women to put this style back on the rack, at $249.00 you sort of expect perfection.
After such a long time upstairs it was great to head downstairs to see the ski/snowboard stuff, and my patience for taking such tedious notes was wearing a little thin. The first thing I noticed was that the front snowboard section was a little lighter in product than I remembered in seasons past. The snowboard brands represented the most were Burton, some Bonfire, and Volcom. Down on the "ski" area of the sales floor there was a familiar sea of product and the one piece that stood out in a huge way was the Kjus Women's Val Down Jacket, there were only 2 of them left on the floor!
In fact this is one of my very favorite pieces since I first saw it as ISPO. But it has a Kjus price tag that puts it above $450.00...darn it. There's not much to say except it's amazingly cute, great style, amazing fit, and great colors, something like this for less $$$ would be fantastic!
On a distracted side note, while searching for a photo of the Val on the internet I also found this cute down style from Peak Performance, haven't seen anything more than this photo, but it looks interesting. Still more to come from NYC soon!
No comments:
Post a Comment