In the past few months, it seems as if every man in a hip part of New York City has been wearing a pair of Patagonia baggies or a pair of loosely fitted cargo pants with a plastic buckle around the waist. Or, if you went 20 minutes outside of the city on a “nature walk,” you'd see herds of dudes out there in comfortable yet functional hiking sandals, perhaps paired with a funky bootleg T-shirt with some facts about Walter Benjamin on it. If you've seen these things, don't fret. You’re not crazy. Everyone is dressing like a rock climber now.
Many of them are even climbing themselves. Rock climbing, like darning socks and naming your sourdough starter, is among the many hobbies people gravitated toward during the pandemic. (Of course, it was also having something of a moment pre-pandemic.) But climbing feels distinct from those activities. It’s a solitary activity, but it’s also fun to do with friends. There’s something soothing and methodical about finding your way up the face of some sort of Paleozoic hunk of Earth, or just Nickelodeon-colored manmade walls.
There’s also, unsurprisingly, a whole way to get dressed for it. Climbing up rocks isn’t just about the climb—it’s also about what you wear to do it.
Designer Spencer Phipps is maybe the perfect example of this new climbing guy. Phipps, who lives in Paris, installed a climbing gym in his own home right before the pandemic. It ended up being a great move: He used it all the time in the darkest parts of lockdown, and still uses it quite often today. Phipps says he loves how low-tech climbing is. When he goes for a climb, he tends to wear a lot of vintage military surplus clothing. But when I ask him who is the most stylish person he’s ever seen climbing, he says that there was an octogenarian man at a gym he goes to in Paris who had the best fits he’d ever seen. “He would wear these leggings. But he was, like, so skinny and old that they were kind of like baggy, skinny jeans or something like that. It was just sort of skinny and droopy,” he says. “And then he had these salmon-colored Crocs. And this pom-pom beanie.”
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Erin, who works at VITAL, a gym in Williamsburg, says she can spot rock climber guys out in the world pretty easily. “I’ll notice,” she says, “People on the subway with an Osprey bag. You can usually tell that they’re a climber or a really serious hiker.” Erin’s own favorite climbing-related article of clothing is a pair of Gramicci pants: “I've been wearing them every day because I can wear them to do virtually anything. They also look super cute—kind of like a loose pair of chinos.”
The breadth of climbing fashion was on display at the Tokyo Olympics. This was the first year ever that sport climbing has been included in the games, and with it, some extremely good outfits. The US team wore onesies that looked like circa-1910 “bathing costumes.” Meanwhile, the Canadians had fabulous tanks and shorts courtesy of the cult-y (Canadian) outdoors brand Arc’teryx. They looked cool as hell, giving off a kind of freaky Spider Man energy.
Rock climbing is an unsurprising extension of what I think of as the gorpcore multiverse: a term used to describe all things outdoorsy, regardless of whether or not the wearer in question has any plans to go do any sort of physical activity. If you’ve ever seen a guy dressed to go hike the Matterhorn while inspecting various types of Roquefort at Whole Foods, that’s peak gorp. It extends seamlessly into rock climber style. In fact, so many guys look like rock climbers that actually just aren’t. A lot of the brands guys wear rock climbing are the same brands that guys wear s itting in Prospect Park with their dogs and girlfriends.
Recently, I tried my hand at climbing, and went to a gym in Gowanus. I had a guide: Wesley, a 24 year old who lives in Carroll Gardens. He wore a black pair of shorts and a black shirt—when he goes to the gym, it’s important for him to be comfortable. But when I ask him how his fellow climbers dress, he says: “Funny.” As we walked around the gym, I understood what he meant. The majority of the people at the gym wore thigh-length cargo shorts and a t-shirt for a band that was cool in 2005. There were also a handful of people wearing three-paneled hats. I respected it. The vibe was unmistakably crunchy. Like: these were some guys who probably also knew how to make granola and could fix your bike. No one was wearing a bootleg t-shirt. There was not a pair of Baggies in sight. It was amazing: these people were deeply unfashionable. They weren’t trying to look chic. The only thing that seemed to be a consideration was comfort. In not caring at all about looking cool, the climbers in the gym were cooler than I could’ve ever imagined.
