Please Note: All Material below, and in all my "History of Gear" webpages, is copyrighted, and no usage of my material is permitted unless explicit permission is granted by me, Bruce B. Johnson, owner of OregonPhotos.com. ... Editors: Please contact me if you have interest in publishing....Others: if you were involved with one of the old-line, vintage gear companies and have a story to tell in these pages, please contact me soon.....Sponsors: if your outdoor company is interested in sponsoring this site, please contact me for details.
...The Story of an Outdoorsman
with down on his mind
Time: the 1920s and 1930s..... A Seattle-area resident who was otherwise famed as a Labrador Retreiver fancier seems an unlikely gear innovator, but the company name "Eddie Bauer" inspired three generations of climbers, expeditioners and backpackers... Initially Eddie was a young man with few financial resources. He opened "Eddie Bauer's Sport Shop" in Seattle, Washington in 1920 on a shoestring budget... Gradually he built his company into one of the best-known in the World.
The birth of his Seattle neighbor REI was two years in the future when Bauer created North America's first quilted down jacket, the Skyliner, in 1936, and later patented it in 1940. (he was then 41 years old)..... Mr. Eddie Bauer and his son were involved in the company until 1968, at which time the Bauers handed over the reins to their long-time shareholders the Niemis...In 1971 the company was sold to its first big corporate buyer, General Mills. Sometime in the late 1970s or early 80s, Eddie Bauer changed their identity, dropping their tagline "Expedition Outfiter," and along with it nearly all of the clothing which was oriented toward expeditioners, Arctic explorers and Alaskan pipeline workers. It was a sad time in the History of Gear.
Spiegel bought the company
from General Mills in 1988. Wikipedia adds the information that
in 2003, Spiegel, Inc., entered bankruptcy. Wikipedia states that
the Spiegel catalog and all other assets were sold, except for
Eddie Bauer. In May 2005, Spiegel, Inc., emerged from bankruptcy
under the name "Eddie Bauer Holdings" and owned primarily
by Commerzbank." Here is a link to the Wikipedia
article.
Mr. Eddie Bauer Sr. passed away in 1986. He was a man who changed the climbing world, though himself not a climber.
See circa 1965 Bauer clothing in action in classy old camping picture! Click here or the label to the left.
Other inventions by Mr. Bauer included: ...the B&B flasher, a trolling lure that he patented about 1970; an earlier invention (1934) was a regulation badminton shuttlecock (the Bauer Shuttlecock) that remains the standard for the sport today..
KARA KORAM! To a teenager in the Sixties, an EXPEDITION! to
the icy Himalayan realms of the KARA KORAM Range in Pakistan seemed
like the ultimate adventure on the planet.
Imagine my delight when a genuine
expedition-rated Kara Koram down parka entered our family in 1966!
Those were the days when Eddie Bauer down gear truly was "Made
in America," and was truly worthy of its advertising claims
of being expedtion quality. The Kara Koram-labelled gear proudly
proclaimed that Eddie Bauer's identity was as "Expedition
Outfitter." Below is an image of me wearing a much-used,
weathered Kara Koram down parka. 
Its
outer shell material was no nanby-panby, lightweight ripstop or
taffeta nylon. No, the hard-working men in Alaska or on the DEW
Line required the durability of stout 60/40 cloth, and inner linings
of stout 1.9 oz. ripstop. There are large buttons (no velcro---
this coat was made pre-velcro!), and the front opens with a heavy
brass zipper (still running fine after 40 years). This particular
parka is circa 1966.. The Kara Koram line has seen much duty in
the Arctic and Antarctic, as well as on numerous climbing expeditions.
The picture below reveals some fine weathering/cracking details
in the big buttons, but the hefty brass Talon zipper is as good
as ever!
GOOSE DOWN was a key component of the success of both Frostline and Holubar Kits.... both companies created innovative methods to package the down for consumer sewing kits. Goose Down occupied center stage for decades during the History of Gear. It was the clearly superior insulation of choice.
Down terminology--- "fillpower" is one of the main parameters that determines down quality. Down with increasingly higher (better) fillpower costs more and more. Cheap down in department store jackets often has only 450-500 fillpower, and it's duck down with lots of larger feathers and feather shafts, etc. "Normal" down is goose down with a fillpower of 550, as measured in the supposedly standard testing cylinder-- under controlled conditions, how much volume will one pound of down expand to fill up? Typical levels of better quality down are 600, 650, 700, and then the ultra-premium 800. Some folks doubt the truth of claims as high as 800, but in my book, having owned a bag with 800 fillpower down, as you get into the highest grades, it's all mighty fine stuff, soft and luxurious and heavenly light and compressible. You really can tell a big difference, even over 550 down. The exact source of the down (the birds) formerly was held in great esteem, with eider down and Polish down being regarded as the ultimate, but nowadays many say it doesn't really matter where it comes from, as long as it passes the tests, one down is as good as any other--- and nowadays most of the World's down comes from geese raised for meat in (you guessed it) China....
The cleaning of older down garments and sleeping bags--- this is an important subject which I will write about at length at a later date. The brief warning is NOT to dry clean or machine wash older down items, IN PARTICULAR sleeping bags with their delicate interior structures of baffling. Hand washing with a good down soap is the method of choice.
copyright Bruce B. Johnson 2006. Reader input is welcome.
Please Note: All Material above, and in all my "History
of Gear" webpages, is copyrighted, and no usage of my material
is permitted unless explicit permission is granted by me, Bruce
B. Johnson, owner of OregonPhotos.com. ... Editors: Please contact me if you have interest
in publishing....Others: if you were involved
with one of the old-line, vintage gear companies and have a story
to tell in these pages, please contact me soon.
