Patagonia, the outdoor clothing company, has won hearts and minds through its earnest embrace of a mission bigger than its profit margins – and it is updating this mission for this volatile moment.
It has earned itself the moniker ‘Patagucci’, for its functional luxury clothing. The coinage points to how the company, established in 1973 by Californian surfers, has become the comfortably remunerated hiker’s apparel of choice.
It was never intended to be a mass-market brand but the aspirations of its founder, Yvon Chouinard, were always intended to have a mass effect on the planet. Chouinard – probably one of...