The first time I realized that shopping for outdoor gear was complicated, I was in the legendary Paragon Sports on Broadway in New York City. It must have been around 2009 and, while I’d been hiking since my early teens, until then I’d always just worn whatever gym gear I happened to own to get out on the trail. But I’d met someone I liked in , was eyeing a move out to the Rockies, and had discovered that my cotton yoga pants and Nike running shoes might not cut it at .
So I was in the market for a technical (after wearing my trendy Converse Fleece bought for a trek across Lapland for at least a decade) and a decent . The helpful shop assistant talked to me all about what types of activities I was planning on doing, where I was going to do them and the technical specs of various items I might consider, including the differences between men’s and women’s models. An hour later, I left with my first women’s North Face fleece (stolen a couple of years later from a Boulder yoga studio) and a unisex Kelty backpack which I still own.
Fast forward 15 years and I still tend to mix and match when it comes to so-called gender-specific gear (that is actually sex-specific, if we’re being specific). I’m 5’4” tall and reasonably lean so I tend to shop women’s clothing, even though I usually prefer the color of men’s styles, but when it comes to other gear like backpacks and , it’s never occurred to me not to buy unisex. But should we always be buying gender-specifi.
