Gear: Chapter 6

"Gorpcore" emerges.... from (maybe, potentially) unexpected places. For images, links, and more information, head to articlesofinterest.substack.com https://articlesofinterest.substack.com/ Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices https://dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Speaker 00

  All right, everybody, wake yourselves up. Get your equipment together. Let's go, let's move, move, move. Fallout, right now. Platoon, at close interval. Chapter six.

• 0:13Avery Trufelman?

  I couldn't help myself. When I was at Natick, I just loved the beautiful leather shearling coat that retired Lieutenant Colonel David Acetta was wearing.

• 0:21Speaker 02

  This is leather and sheepskin.

• 0:23Avery Trufelman?

  It was so perfect. It was like the platonic ideal of an authentic military flight jacket.

• 0:28Speaker 02

  And historically, that was very warm and very durable.

• 0:32Avery Trufelman?

  And then David Acetta opened the inside of the coat and revealed the label.

• 0:36Speaker 02

  This is actually...

• 0:37Speaker 03

  Stussy? No. Get out.

• 0:40Avery Trufelman?

  And it wasn't an authentic flight jacket. It was from a streetwear brand.

• 0:44Speaker 02

  I didn't know who that was.

• 0:46Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 0:46Speaker 02

  Until my son was looking at the jacket and he told me, and he said, "Is that Stussy?" And I said, "What's Stussy?"

• 0:52Speaker 03

  This is a very valuable jacket, actually.

• 0:55Avery Trufelman?

  I want David's jacket so badly. It's so great. But that's so funny, right? The fashion interpretation of military was good enough for an actual veteran who works on a military base to wear at work. The military and fashion are intertwined. In the United States of America, the military and fashion designers have been locked in this ongoing embrace throughout the 20th century. Ever since that moment when civilian fashion designers started adapting the patterns of the M43 jacket that they helped make. And similarly, fashion has also had a relationship with that other, ongoing, American trend, where Americans have always wanted to look more rugged, more outdoorsy than they actually

• 1:40Avery Trufelman?

  are. And while this has been true since the days of the buckskin suit, in recent times, as we increasingly wear arcteryx to go buy eggs... There has emerged a cheeky, nifty little name for this phenomenon. Did you invent the word Gorp Corps?

• 1:56Speaker 04

  I did invent the word Gorp Corps.

• 1:58Avery Trufelman?

  This is Jason Chen. He was a writer at New York Magazine in 2017 when he coined the word Gorp Corps.

• 2:05Speaker 04

  I think that Gorp Corps is adopting the apparel that is commonly associated with outdoor activities, parkas, puffers, hiking sandals, hiking gear, and wearing it in an urban context. And it was kind of ugly, but cool looking and also a little bit fashion.

• 2:34Avery Trufelman?

  OK, what about it was new in 2017? What made the Gorp Corps movement feel so different? Because, you know, like Biggie Smalls rapped about North Faces in the 90s.

• 2:47Avery Trufelman?

  It's like people have been wearing this stuff for a hot minute.

• 2:51Speaker 04

  Yeah, exactly what you're saying had been happening, but I think like a generation or two generations prior. And I think at that moment, it felt very different. So it's been made a little bit chic-er. It's maybe made a little bit more streamlined. It's maybe crafted in better materials, maybe even more technical materials, but in cooler colors.

• 3:19Avery Trufelman?

  Celebrities were wearing outdoor clothes to Fashion Week, to premieres. High fashion designers were putting their spins on what looked like camping gear.

• 3:29Speaker 04

  And it really did feel important in such a New York mag-ism to have to coin it in some way.

• 3:36Avery Trufelman?

  To explain the name that Jason came up with, GORP is an acronym for good old raisins and peanuts, trail mix, basically.

• 3:44Speaker 04

  Having grown up in Southern California and not necessarily been a hiker myself, but I did eat GORP, so that was a language I could speak.

• 3:52Avery Trufelman?

  And then if you add the "cor" suffix, it turns it into an aesthetic.

• 3:55Speaker 04

  Norm Corps was born. And so now you have Dad Corps and... Clown core, 100%, just anything core goes.

• 4:06Avery Trufelman?

  So Jason published this piece that's a little sassy but also quite serious that Gorp Core is a phenomenon.

• 4:12Speaker 04

  It just kind of went out there and some of my friends read it and thought, oh, fine, I read that thing you wrote.

• 4:19Speaker 04

  At the end of the year, I found out that it was nominated for the Oxford English Dictionary Word of the Year, which was hilarious. It lost. It didn't actually win.

• 4:28Avery Trufelman?

  But once the style was named, it really took off.

• 4:33Speaker 05

  On my way here, I saw so many Solomons. I saw a girl jog by, those intense shades, you know?

• 4:41Speaker 06

  Like the Oakleys?

• 4:42Speaker 05

  Yeah, like mirrored visor Oakleys and then a North Face fleece.

• 4:46Avery Trufelman?

  This is fashion writer and observer Amelia Petraka. We were standing on the street in Soho.

• 4:51Speaker 06

  It isn't just me, right? This has turned into Gorp Corridor.

• 4:55Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah, 100%. I mean, you mean like this?

• 4:57Speaker 06

  Like Soho?

• 4:58Speaker 05

  I feel like we're here at a very interesting time with this building.

• 5:03Avery Trufelman?

  Amelia and I were in front of the Soho REI, which has been on the corner of Houston and Lafayette since 2011, and it just announced its closing next year. But I don't think that means it's the death of Gorp Core. I think it's a sign that REI has a lot of competition here.

• 5:18Speaker 05

  They're just doing what they do, which is sell you nice sneakers. But the fashion consumer is not coming here.

• 5:26Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 5:27Avery Trufelman?

  Right there, all around REI were so many other places to buy outdoor clothes.

• 5:31Speaker 06

  Like, look, I can see Carhartt. Like, there it is, I'm looking at it.

• 5:35Speaker 05

  It's true.

• 5:36Avery Trufelman?

  Actually, that wasn't even a Carhartt. It's a Carhartt work in progress, which is an upscale take on workwear by a European company that licensed Carhartt's name.

• 5:44Speaker 06

  And there's an Arc'teryx down that way.

• 5:47Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 5:48Avery Trufelman?

  Arc'teryx and the North Face are a block over. Patagonia's over on Crosby Street. And those are just the overtly outdoor-y-ish brands. Nearby, Zara and Uniqlo and Everlane also sell puffer coats and leggings. And down the block, Free People just started their whole line of activewear, which REI even sells.

• 6:07Speaker 05

  Soho did become Gorp. Soho got Gorp. When this happened? I think it was like pre-pandemic and then the pandemic, it just exploded.

• 6:16Avery Trufelman?

  In 2020, Gucci and the North Face released a collaboration featuring heavy-duty puffer coats with interlocking G's. Dior collaborated with Birkenstock, Reformation with Canada Goose. In 2024, Sorel collaborated with Prunza Schuler, and models wore these rain boots for the Spring Summer 2025 show. More and more partnerships are emerging between fashion designers and like dorky crunchy brands every year. And some of the original pioneering outdoor brands sat up and noticed.

• 6:48Speaker 07

  We'd been doing a project with the archive at Eddie Bauer.

• 6:52Avery Trufelman?

  That's Kyle Fitzgibbons, our designer at Buck Mason, who we talked to at the very start of the series in a room full of military surplus. And some of the surplus in that room had been designed by Eddie Bauer.

• 7:04Speaker 07

  Eddie Bauer was a manufacturer for the US Air Force and made military garments as well.

• 7:09Avery Trufelman?

  In 2023, Buck Mason did a collaboration where they made their version of vintage Eddie Bauer clothes.

• 7:15Speaker 07

  It's called a Skyliner, Eddie Bauer Skyliner.

• 7:18Avery Trufelman?

  Kyle held up a down parka and showed me how they essentially made a replica of an original Eddie Bauer Skyliner jacket.

• 7:25Speaker 07

  And this, for the most part, stitch for stitch, is made in the way that the original piece was made.

• 7:30Avery Trufelman?

  According to Eddie Bauer designer Anya Gorman, Eddie Bauer liked the Buck Mason collaboration so much, they're actually incorporating some of it into Eddie Bauer's normal clothing line.

• 7:41Speaker 06

  What Buck Mason did was relatively authentic to our heritage.

• 7:46Avery Trufelman?

  Will it be labeled a collab or it's just?

• 7:47Speaker 06

  No, it's just gonna be Eddie Bauer.

• 7:49Avery Trufelman?

  But it was inspired by that?

• 7:50Speaker 06

  It was inspired by that.

• 7:51Avery Trufelman?

  It's like Buck Mason knew Eddie Bauer's roots better than Eddie Bauer did. It took collaborating with a fashion brand to remind the outdoor brand how tough they used to be.

• 8:02Speaker 06

  We felt that the fabric that they chose was like 10 degrees more rugged than what we usually use. So we went to one that's like five degrees more rugged.

• 8:11Avery Trufelman?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 8:11Speaker 06

  It still feels very new for us.

• 8:13Avery Trufelman?

  Outdoor companies and fashion companies are like converging. It's getting harder and harder to tell what aspects of gear are just for fashion and what are actually for function, especially now that looking functional is fashionable. And maybe this is part of why, to Jason's extreme surprise. This word he created has stuck around.

• 8:36Speaker 04

  I feel like it has had more resonance than it ever had when I first wrote about it. It really just has not gone away and you can't really choose your legacy, I guess.

• 8:49Avery Trufelman?

  And I personally, me, the humble podcaster Avery Trufelman, have two theories of why GORPCOR, this recent movement, came about in the first place and why it feels different. And I think it's because of two pretty new and two pretty specific elements that resulted from the cross-pollination of fashion, military, and the outdoor industry. Hear me out after the break.

• 9:19Speaker 06

  Hey there, it's Robyn from PRX. If you're a longtime listener of Radiotopia, you may know that we had a podcast that ran from 2016 to 2020, discussing every episode of the show, The West Wing. Well, I'm excited to tell you The West Wing Weekly is back. Joshua Molina, who starred on The West Wing as Will Bailey, and Rishikesh Hirway, creator and host of Song Exploder, have reunited to discuss the hit Netflix political thriller, The Diplomat. Just as they did in their original run, they're discussing each episode of the series in sequence, joined by special guests from the show and from the real world of diplomacy. Rishi and Josh will be wrapping up the first season with a special live taping at Union Chapel in London on November 14th. Subscribe now to The West Wing Weekly wherever you get your podcasts.

• 10:05Avery Trufelman?

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• 10:49Avery Trufelman?

  Start shopping now at the realreal.com articals.

• 10:54Avery Trufelman?

  On a hot June day, a woman in North Carolina drove to her local shopping center, but found the parking lot was completely full. So she parked in one of the parking spots reserved for veterans. After about 30 minutes, she came back with all her bags and found a note under her windshield. It said, "This parking is for veterans, lady. Learn to read."

• 11:15Speaker 06

  Except she is a veteran.

• 11:17Avery Trufelman?

  And when veterans like Andrea Goldstein heard about this parking lot story, it went kind of viral. They were like, "Yeah, exactly. I get this all the time."

• 11:26Speaker 06

  I get this question, like, "What's your interest in the Navy? Who's the veteran?" When I walked around Congress, I wore an American flag and US Navy pin on my lapel. My lanyard said "US Navy." And people would be like, "Oh, what's your connection to the Navy?" But in a way that it wasn't like, "Did you serve?" It was very much like, "Did your dad, husband, male relative?" "No, I'm still in the Navy, actually, as a reservist."

• 11:48Avery Trufelman?

  Andrea was active duty in the Navy for seven years as an intelligence officer. And afterwards, she worked for a number of federal agencies, including in the House of Representatives, where she was the lead staffer on a task force devoted to veteran women's issues.

• 12:02Speaker 06

  When I spoke to active-duty women, not veterans, when I spoke to active-duty women, I heard more about uniform frustrations than about sexual assault. Really? Yes. The issues with sexual assault in the military are well-known. I worked on those, too. But your uniform is what you're putting on every single day, and it's your representation of you belong to something and that that institution has considered you as being part of it. So if you're putting on a uniform that doesn't fit, doesn't look right, doesn't feel right, then it's something that every single day, you're being told, "You don't belong here. You're an afterthought."

• 12:42Avery Trufelman?

  An ill-fitting uniform is an insidious pecking away at respect.

• 12:47Speaker 06

  And I thought about this for years and years. I was like, "Why do some of these guys look great in uniforms, but none of the women do?"

• 12:53Avery Trufelman?

  Even though women make up almost 18% of the US Armed Forces, and they've been in combat roles for well over a decade, they have a perpetual problem getting gear that fits. And this is actually really bad. A soldier wearing an ill-fitting body plate could not be protected from bullets and actually throw out her back.

• 13:11Speaker 06

  Like, why is it that if I go to RAI and I get a backpacking backpack, it's going to shift the weight to my thighs? But the one that I'm wearing that I was issued...

• 13:20Speaker 05

  Is putting it on my hips and my spine.

• 13:23Avery Trufelman?

  And this is just the latest issue in a long-running problem. Women have always held positions as nurses, or secretaries, or mechanics, or clerks, or pilots, and been deployed all over the world.

• 13:33Speaker 03

  And because of how male-dominated the quartermaster department was, they never quite got the hang of how do women's clothing work. It was always like a problem.

• 13:44Avery Trufelman?

  This is our military layperson expert, Joshua Kerner.

• 13:47Speaker 03

  It's always very funny because quartermaster corps will like draw up something, and then the women will get it, and we like, have you ever met a woman?

• 13:54Avery Trufelman?

  Usually, it was just a men's pattern that was just feminized by making it smaller.

• 14:00Speaker 03

  They don't know how to cut for curves, so it's like, this just fits terribly.

• 14:05Avery Trufelman?

  For decades, decades and decades and decades.

• 14:08Speaker 05

  The khaki trousers for women, these trousers didn't fit right, the pockets didn't work. Just look at Demi Moore in G.I. Jane. She could not make them look good in that movie.

• 14:19Avery Trufelman?

  Andrea also had to wear those same Demi Moore trousers, and they were awful.

• 14:24Speaker 05

  For years and years and years, senior enlisted and officers in the Navy were like, do we just want these pants to fit? Which have now since been fixed, but this was like years.

• 14:32Avery Trufelman?

  It sounds superficial, but an outfit that makes you look frumpy can really mess with your confidence, especially when you might already feel insecure entering this bastion of masculinity.

• 14:43Speaker 05

  And so to have something that was not your choice, that was forced upon you, impacting your credibility, you don't need anything else about you to count against you. It's like one of those things where like women have to do things better than men to like be equal with them.

• 15:00Avery Trufelman?

  Veteran Victoria Chamberlain realized that you essentially have to be a cool girl to hang in the military.

• 15:05Speaker 05

  You can't be annoying, I know, that's so coded. You can't be bad at your job, you can't be bad at shooting, you can't be bad at PT. I was pretty bad at pushups, but they never like really saw me do them, so. That's fine.

• 15:17Avery Trufelman?

  Victoria was in the military for just under eight years.

• 15:19Speaker 05

  I would say honestly, the army that I was a part of really tried to include women, be less misogynistic, but that might be the type of people and the type of units that I was associated with.

• 15:31Avery Trufelman?

  Victoria worked as an oboist in the army band, and then she worked in public affairs.

• 15:36Speaker 05

  Yeah, I experienced some things that were unsavory, but I mean, you can tell if you're about to like enter a space where you're not wanted if the men say females instead of women are soldiers. And I think that is a thing in the civilian world, too. Most things that you can find happening in the civilian world, you can see happening in the military. It's just, it's a reflection of society.

• 16:00Avery Trufelman?

  And so, as a reflection of society, the army's been trying to address this, this intangible inequality where all the women just looked so much worse than the men. And one way they tried to do this was with the ACUA.

• 16:15Speaker 05

  Army Combat Uniform Alternate.

• 16:17Avery Trufelman?

  The ACUA, which Victoria was issued, was supposed to be a gender neutral uniform.

• 16:24Speaker 05

  Basically, it was an alternate uniform that had narrower shoulders. There was a tiny bit of a different measurement between the hip and the waist.

• 16:33Avery Trufelman?

  The Army Combat Uniform Alternate was for smaller or narrower people. It's what Victoria wore, but her ACUA uniform also fit Victoria's husband, who was also in the army.

• 16:45Speaker 05

  And in my opinion, it like looked better on him because this, like, he's not like a huge, broad, shouldered guy. It looked good. It like fit him better.

• 16:53Avery Trufelman?

  Victoria and her husband could wear each other's uniforms.

• 16:56Speaker 05

  So we would share them, like whatever was clean in the pile. We had the same name, same rank.

• 17:01Avery Trufelman?

  But whenever her husband wore her ACUA, somebody always noticed.

• 17:06Speaker 05

  Somebody would always be like, are you wearing your wife's jacket?

• 17:09Avery Trufelman?

  And that's because there were a few elements of the ACUA that were a little more noticeable.

• 17:14Speaker 05

  The rank insignia was moved a little bit higher so that it wasn't right in the middle of your breasts.

• 17:20Avery Trufelman?

  But still, the ACUA wasn't supposed to be a women's uniform.

• 17:23Speaker 05

  A lot of people had it in their mind that the ACUA was only for women. And so my husband could not wear my jacket. And then I would get so mad because I'd be like, it's Army Combat Uniform Alternate.

• 17:34Avery Trufelman?

  And when the army officially scrapped the ACUA, it was phased out from 2019 to 2021. Instead, the Army took on a new approach to clothing and sizing and gender, one that was very much adopted in real time alongside the outdoor industry.

• 17:55Avery Trufelman?

  Dude, I'm already overwhelmed. Functional Fabric Fair in Portland, Oregon is where outdoor brands and the Department of Defense go shopping for textiles. There, in the vast Portland Convention Center, textile mills and textile vendors showed off their latest sweat-wicking, heat-absorbing, feather-light, stain-proof, sturdy, stretchy miracle fabrics.

• 18:16Speaker 06

  Some functional fabrics, so many like that.

• 18:19Speaker 04

  It's like you wear a garment, but you don't feel you wear a garment.

• 18:23Speaker 03

  You're not allowed to say how you can do this.

• 18:26Avery Trufelman?

  Of course not. The vast majority of vendors were from Taiwan, but this was in 2024, which was just a year ago, but I imagine a lot's changed since all the Trump tariffs. These mills and these textile manufacturers are the ones experimenting with new chemical coatings, new twists of yarn, new methods to make fabrics perform in exciting new ways. These days, innovation isn't hard to find. It's not that brands are tinkering and struggling to look for something new. There's an embarrassment of riches out there, from hydrophobic rain shells to super-soft second-skin fabric to bulletproof fabric.

• 19:02Speaker 05

  Innovation largely comes from the material of vendors who are working on creating something that's really exciting and interesting that they can sell to those brands, and then the brands take material and they run with it.

• 19:15Avery Trufelman?

  Daniela Kane used to lead design teams at Nike and Columbia Sportswear and Adidas back in the 90s.

• 19:20Speaker 05

  And at that time, we were working with marketing and all of the brand powers to getting people out of cotton into functional fabric, which were, at that time, climate cool or dry fit.

• 19:33Avery Trufelman?

  Daniela was in the industry in that pivotal moment in the 90s, when polyester was rebranded as functional fabric.

• 19:39Speaker 05

  But it's not the brands that came up with this genius ideas. No, it came from the materials. These companies have a real stakehold in functional fabrics.

• 19:51Avery Trufelman?

  We were starting to turn more of these performance fabrics into fashionable silhouettes. In the 90s and early aughts, Michelle Rose was part of a cohort of new designers who were taking these new performance fabrics and making new garments with them. I did work for Columbia Sportswear and The North Face for about 15 years.

• 20:10Speaker 05

  Years and designing a lot of outerwear.

• 20:14Avery Trufelman?

  Designing for women in the outdoor industry used to be like designing for women in the military in that women's clothes were basically men's clothes in a smaller size. And in the outdoor industry, maybe they'd change the color. This was a practice commonly known as pink it and shrink it. And some brands wouldn't even bother to do that.

• 20:34Speaker 05

  Until the 90s, most outdoor and sports gear was geared towards men and women would just buy men's gear because there wasn't a lot of stuff geared towards women.

• 20:43Avery Trufelman?

  But over in athletic clothing, over in sports, there had been a sea change with the passage of Title IX in 1972. Women had been participating in many more sports on a collegiate level. And so, sports clothing was just starting to be made for women.

• 21:03Speaker 05

  The sports bra had only been invented in the 70s. People don't know that.

• 21:08Avery Trufelman?

  When the sports bra was created, it was literally two jock straps that were sewn together. It was still getting perfected throughout the 80s. And so, it really wasn't until the 90s that the synthetic revolution meant women's sportswear. And this new high-tech performance fabric that was finally out there on the market was being designed for women's bodies. And outdoor designers, like Michelle, were taking outdoor wear away from like flannel and making it way more tight and chic.

• 21:39Speaker 05

  I love black. I like sleek silhouettes. I will always like that. And that's the contouring. When we actually started putting more shaping into active wear. And that's where athleisure came in.

• 21:50Avery Trufelman?

  Ah, the birth of athleisure. That point where leggings became pants.

• 21:55Speaker 05

  Lululemon, Athleta, Lucy, all those came out in late 90s as some of the first outdoor and active.

• 22:01Avery Trufelman?

  Brands that were really going towards sportswear, performance stuff for women that you could wear on the street. This is, I think, in part, what would eventually pave the way for Gorpcore. In the 90s and into the new millennium, this high-performance clothing was starting to look good. It was starting to be shaped and fit well and look flattering enough to want to wear around. And like, women had never really had this before. And this got to the point where, in the aughts, the lines between fashion and athletic wear and outdoor wear started to get really, really blurry. Like, what was considered performance wear anymore, when every mall chain was selling yoga clothes that you could actually just wear for anything all the time?

• 22:45Avery Trufelman?

  And you could buy a perfectly decent puffer coat at Uniqlo? Everything has become so similar that you can get the same kind of jacket from every outdoor brand out there. Or even mainstream fashion brands. Exactly. The race to the bottom for a $99 rainshell. And the customer is so used to getting such cheap stuff. The larger a brand gets, the more it has to hit price points, appeal to more people, keep growing. Makes everybody start looking the same. Leggings everywhere, sports bras everywhere. H and M has them. They're totally fine. So how do you know what's actually like, quote unquote, "performance clothing" and what's not? When sort of, everything has stretch in it and everything is some shade of athleisure?

• 23:31Speaker 03

  Well, there's a saying in the outdoors, it's like, "Hike your own hike." Yeah. So it's like, however you want to present yourself outdoors.

• 23:37Avery Trufelman?

  When I met up with Chelsea Rizzo and Alison Levy in their office, they were both wearing clothes from their brand, Hikerkind. But Hikerkind clothes just look like turtlenecks and button-down shirts and comfy pants. They just look like clothes.

• 23:52Speaker 03

  That's a lot of what Hikerkind is trying to solve, is not having multiple wardrobes for the different parts of your life.

• 23:57Avery Trufelman?

  And so I was like, okay, if these clothes just look like normal clothes, why wouldn't I buy some other stretchy pants from anywhere else? Everything has performance fabric in it these days. What makes these clothes

• 24:11Speaker 03

  Obviously, you can take a performance material and make fashion clothing, and it can have some performance capabilities because automatically, if you're using performance materials, they have all those properties that the fabric have. But designing clothing for hiking, backpacking, any sort of outdoor activity, you're thinking of the different finishes and the different seamings and every kind of detail.

• 24:34Avery Trufelman?

  The elements that separate fashion clothes from performance gear are not obvious. They are there, but you have to look really closely. Like, what's an example of, like, a technical finish?

• 24:43Speaker 03

  Like a bonding.

• 24:44Avery Trufelman?

  A bonding, yeah. So like, bonding is like... I'll show you. So you see how it's just an adhesive, so you can see it's like... Oh, it has no... Seam. Yeah. A bonded seam is functionally glued instead of sewn.

• 24:55Speaker 03

  We made sure that the fusing was more lightweight, and those finishes are lending to the performance of the gear.

• 25:01Avery Trufelman?

  HikerKind makes outdoor clothes in sizes from extra small to 3XL. They're marketed as women's hiking clothes, but I don't think any of their stuff comes in pink.

• 25:10Speaker 03

  Ours definitely air on the edge of androgyny. And we had a lot of consideration around, do we call ourselves a women's outdoor brand? Ultimately, it was the most authentic way that we could categorize what we were doing.

• 25:22Avery Trufelman?

  They're among a number of niche independent brands reimagining the outdoors and who it's for.

• 25:28Speaker 03

  Chelsea and I didn't feel represented, so that's why we wanted to create HikerKind.

• 25:32Avery Trufelman?

  HikerKind started during the pandemic.

• 25:34Speaker 03

  Yeah, the pandemic. We saw the increase of outdoor participants and showing the diversity that's actually out there.

• 25:40Avery Trufelman?

  And bigger outdoor companies have started to catch on to this. It's no longer just little niche independent brands who are trying to approach gender and sizing completely differently. Some brands call it extended sizing. We call it inclusive sizing. So we've really made a lot of improvements in overall fit across body types. This is Scott Mosher. He's REI's Creative Brand Director. It's only within the last few years that REI has done some dramatic reimagining. We have men's and women's clothing, but we also have unisex clothing and we have non-

• 26:13Speaker 02

  Which we just call adults. And it's a completely new size chart.

• 26:17Avery Trufelman?

  And this is actually a major undertaking. A quick word about how sizing usually works. Normally, commercial brands just choose a size that they consider a medium. Usually, this is like a size eight. And then that's the one size that actually gets fitted on a person. And they just use math to figure out all the other sizes. As you might imagine, this doesn't always translate exactly well. And it ends up leaving a lot of bodies out or making them look bad.

• 26:43Speaker 02

  So these are our fit forms.

• 26:44Avery Trufelman?

  Scott took me to a room full of headless cloth fit forms. And each mannequin was a completely different body. Different height, different waist, different ratio of legs and hips and waist. REI is considering all of these forms in their pattern making and their sizing. This is a lot of bodies. There's like a room full of different bodies. Wait, may I just count how many forms there are? One, two, three, four, five. And I counted them all. Thirty-six, thirty-seven, thirty-eight, thirty-nine. Is everyone here? Or are some missing? Okay.

• 27:15Speaker 02

  A couple that people are using right now to be able to look at who are we fitting? And who are we not fitting?

• 27:20Avery Trufelman?

  This is a ton of labor. But this is the way REI is trying to make sure that more people are comfortable.

• 27:26Speaker 02

  I think we had three or four sizes in our sleeping bags. So now we have nine sizes. We think this is going to be something the industry is going to start to adopt.

• 27:35Avery Trufelman?

  Although, actually, this is already being adopted more widely than I knew. But not in the industry.

• 27:43Speaker 05

  If I was a designer out in industry, I might have a target market that I am trying to sell casual wear to people that are, say, ages eighteen to thirty-three.

• 27:55Avery Trufelman?

  But Annette is not a designer out in industry. She is, to put it in layman's terms, the head designer for the military.

• 28:02Speaker 05

  I'm Annette LaFleur. I'm the branch chief for the Design, Pattern and Prototype Branch here at Devcom Soldier Center in Natick, Massachusetts.

• 28:11Avery Trufelman?

  I spoke to Annette over the phone. She wasn't at work the day I went to Natick. But I got to see her workshop. Wow.

• 28:16Speaker 02

  This is where her magic happens.

• 28:18Avery Trufelman?

  It's wild. You turn the corner of this military base and suddenly there's a fashion design studio. Like designers were cutting twelves and drawing patterns. And is that they're working on a pregnant training uniform? Yes. Yeah, a training uniform for pregnant soldiers. The Army had a bunch of mannequins in all different shapes and sizes.

• 28:36Speaker 05

  So we do have some dress forms that are custom made to date. That's specific to the military.

• 28:42Avery Trufelman?

  They looked almost exactly like the dress forms I saw at REI. Almost. I mean, not quite. Army sizes are different than civilian sizes.

• 28:51Speaker 05

  For using data that's specific to the military. So in general, I'd say they're more fit. But then again, you have all different body shapes and sizes.

• 29:01Avery Trufelman?

  Military sizes go from extra small to 4XL, and they're in heights from XX short to XX long. Tops are measured by both chest and height, and bottoms are measured by both waist and inseam. So you could be a medium regular on top and a large long on bottom, or like a 2XL short on top and a large regular on bottom. There are a lot of different combinations. You could get rather specific.

• 29:28Speaker 05

  The military is a broad array of people from different ages and ethnic backgrounds. And when we're designing an item, it has to fit the 5th through the 95th percentile. That's very wide range.

• 29:40Avery Trufelman?

  And overall, this is very army. Like in the Marines, everybody has to be in the shape of a Dorito. The Army's always been more inclusive than other branches. But now, these Army uniforms, the one I saw Annette's team working on, these were not sized by gender at all. They're just in a wider range of sizes, and they're able to be adjusted for each individual's specific shape.

• 30:02Speaker 05

  You might have part of a waistband that has different mechanisms to make it larger or smaller, like the elastic or adjustment tabs. There's all different sorts of ways to adjust body armor in terms of having the plate hit in the right spot.

• 30:18Avery Trufelman?

  I went to NADIC on February 20th, 2025. Eight days after my visit, the Department of Defense issued a new policy declaring that all trans soldiers separate from service. In September, the Secretary of War told 800 generals he was tired of seeing "fat troops" and ordered to halt gender-neutral fitness standards and criticized diversity and inclusion efforts. So I don't know what's going on in Annette Lefleur's workshop now. Our conversation was arranged through the military. I don't have her number to call and ask. But I can't help but wonder if I saw the last gasp of something. This moment when the Army was really bending over backwards to include as many soldiers

• 31:03Avery Trufelman?

  as they possibly could and make them all look good.

• 31:07Speaker 05

  We cut and sew and make prototypes. And then we collaborate with engineers and scientists in regards to the sizing that it needs to be and help them get set up for mass production.

• 31:19Avery Trufelman?

  And Annette has teed me up perfectly to the second half of my little theory of GORP core. The first half is, I think, part of what made GORP core is that more bodies, especially women's bodies, were starting to be included in performance clothes and more people were starting to look good in them. And the second aspect has to do with who was making these performance clothes and who their market was. And I'm going to show you a very specific, I think, very interesting case study and how I think it helped us get to the specific look of GORP. After the break. I first heard about The RealReal, I think, a decade ago.

• 32:01Avery Trufelman?

  Suddenly, it was this place where you could get Prada pumps and Burberry jackets and Gucci handbags for a song. Like, I recently got this vintage 90s Yoji Yamamoto skirt that I wear constantly. The RealReal is adding thousands and thousands of items every single day. So it really does still feel like a treasure hunt, even though it has all the convenience of shopping online. And I periodically use it to clean out my closet. They make it so easy. The RealReal sends a representative to my tiny apartment to pick up my things and assess them for me, and then it's done. Money just appears in my account. The RealReal is the most trusted name in authenticated luxury resale. With over 10,000 new arrivals daily, no one does resale like The RealReal.

• 32:44Avery Trufelman?

  And now, get $25 off your first purchase when you go to the realreal.com articals. That's the realreal.com articals to get your $25 off. Start shopping now at the realreal.com articals.

• 33:04Avery Trufelman?

  If you are a company who is trying to do business with the military, the AUSA Conference is the place to be. It's where all kinds of companies, from gun manufacturers to health startups to cellphone carriers, set up booths and try to impress the generals who are strolling around. Also present are a number of well-known clothing companies and suppliers, ones you definitely know, like you heard me talking to the representatives at Gore-Tex.

• 33:28Speaker 02

  I'm not usually the one to do this, but go ahead.

• 33:29Speaker 03

  Oh, I appreciate it.

• 33:31Avery Trufelman?

  They were game to talk, but most other companies were not.

• 33:36Speaker 03

  I saw this booth yesterday, but I just thought I'd come back. I'm a journalist and I'm working on a project.

• 33:41Avery Trufelman?

  When I tried to speak to other company reps at their booths, many of them ignored me or shrugged me off a number of times before they would finally do me the kindness of outright refusing to talk to me.

• 33:50Speaker 03

  Yeah, Milliken refused to talk.

• 33:53Avery Trufelman?

  Milliken is the parent company of Polar Tech. They had a big old booth at AUSA showing off their military clothes.

• 33:59Speaker 03

  But Milliken owns Polar Tech.

• 34:02Avery Trufelman?

  I wasn't that surprised. I knew this would be hard to report on. I mean, already, if you look at the websites of outdoor companies who contract with the military or make these special ops clothes, those clothes are really hard to find. Like, they bury it on their website a little bit. You have to dig around for these clothes and just know they exist. Like, Patagonia used to put their own name on the uniforms and special ops clothes they made, until they started manufacturing them under a company called Lost Arrow Project. And now it's a rebranded independent company called Forgeline Solutions. And I was trying to find someone who could just talk to me in an in-depth way about this. Like, at Functional Fabric Fair, I saw Vibram had a booth, and you know Vibram. They make the shoe soles. So I went up to them, and at first they were like, "Hey, what's up?" Vibram loves Gorp Court.

• 34:47Avery Trufelman?

  It's widely known that Vibram soles are in military boots. They even had some military soles right there on display in their booth. And when I asked them about their military work, they suddenly got real jumpy.

• 34:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, I just want to be guarded. Yeah, yeah. What do you say?

• 35:02Avery Trufelman?

  And then, just when I was about to give up on getting someone to really talk to me about the world of military contracting, I did meet someone who was willing to talk. And not only was she willing to talk, she was like, "Come on over to our headquarters and see what we're all about." And she was the last person I would have expected, given that she was definitely the best-dressed person at Functional Fabric Fair.

• 35:26Speaker 05

  I just, you know, I like clothes. I'm probably one of the few people here that, like... Have fun with clothes.

• 35:34Avery Trufelman?

  Kat Shea Way is the Vice President of Design and Innovation at the popular outdoor brand Outdoor Research. Unlike most of Kat's coworkers, who were in shorts and flip flops, Kat was wearing a black Margiela dress and little art gallery kitten heels. I was like, what are you doing in the outdoor industry, fabulous Kat? Why aren't you on 7th Avenue? Even I could have used some hiking boots on this stairwell. Wow, this was a lot of steps.

• 36:00Speaker 05

  It is a lot of steps.

• 36:01Avery Trufelman?

  Kat was taking me up the steps of Outdoor Research's office building in downtown Seattle, where she was going to show me openly, matter-of-factly, what Outdoor Research manufactures for the United States Army.

• 36:12Speaker 05

  We are incredibly transparent about this part of our business and really proud of it.

• 36:17Avery Trufelman?

  With Outdoor Research, it's right there on their homepage. There's a tab that says Tactical, and you can just click it, and it says, "Same outdoors, different mission."

• 36:26Speaker 05

  You're putting these kids out there into the harshest environments. You have to protect them.

• 36:31Avery Trufelman?

  So Outdoor Research is really special in that they're just very honest. The other thing that's really unique about Outdoor Research is that they have all three elements of everything that I've been thinking about. One, they're this high-end outdoor company that you can buy at REI that pays attention to trends and makes performance clothes for civilians. And Outdoor Research also makes high-end elite clothes for special operators. I saw a lot of Outdoor Research stuff at that so-called surplus shop in Virginia Beach. And, and, and, this is the really unusual part, Outdoor Research also manufactures for the entire, regular Army.

• 37:13Avery Trufelman?

  There are very few companies at the center of the Venn diagram like this, let alone any that are so open to talking about it.

• 37:21Speaker 05

  It's a nice symbiotic relationship between those sides of the business, and we can really push and pull innovation that way.

• 37:28Avery Trufelman?

  Outdoor Research began as a civilian outdoor gear company. It was started in 1981 by nuclear physicist Ron Gregg.

• 37:35Speaker 05

  Ron, who started our company, was just a scientist who happened to be a mountaineer.

• 37:39Avery Trufelman?

  And pretty early on in the company, Outdoor Research started making equipment for the special operations community. They started doing this in the 80s. They've been in that game for a really long time. And Outdoor Research became especially known for this high-tech glove system they developed. It started with the special operations community that led us to develop. Develop a system, a seven glove system for the special forces community. That's Alex Roderro, head of tactical at Outdoor Research. And then that's cascaded into bigger army projects. Like gloves for the entire army, which is just an entire next level of scale. Make anywhere from five to 6,000 pairs a month. It's got a Gore-Tex insert.

• 38:22Avery Trufelman?

  Of course, every single thing for the army has to be made in the United States to comply with the Berry Amendment. So Outdoor Research has their US glove factory right there in the building. Yeah. So here's, here's the, the fifth floor, which is our sewing floor.

• 38:41Avery Trufelman?

  It was so unexpected and like almost bizarre to go from cubicles on one floor and the next floor is a full blown factory full of machinery and people cranking out gloves.

• 38:54Avery Trufelman?

  May I touch a glove? Yeah. We want to probably touch one of these warm and fresh off the.

• 39:02Avery Trufelman?

  Oh, that's great. Those gloves that I touched that were going out to the whole army, they were good, solid quality gloves. But they weren't special operator quality. They weren't top of the line. Because there are different considerations when you're making gear for the whole conventional military. Instead of making the best products you can possibly develop, when it comes to the whole army, the Department of Defense basically tells Outdoor Research the specs they want. And Outdoor Research has to meet them. The military calls the shots. But when you go for the big army, it gets very competitive, very price sensitive. Made in America costs a lot. Those gloves that I touched are listed on Outdoor Research's website for over 200 bucks a pair.

• 39:46Avery Trufelman?

  But there's no button you can click to buy them. They're for government contract only. So the government's always trying to bring the price down. Like Outdoor Research might propose a design to the Department of Defense and then the army might take that design and strip it down. Then the government will take the product we develop, they'll change materials or remove features, sometimes to the detriment of the. Performance of the product at the end of the day, when they need to cut corners and cut costs to supply product to hundreds of thousands. So this is part of why soldiers and regular infantry will sometimes buy their own supplementary gear. They might want to get something slightly nicer for themselves than what they're issued. And for Outdoor Research, the government's frugality means that if they make a bid for a big army contract,

• 40:31Avery Trufelman?

  Outdoor Research could lose that contract to some other company or brand that's offering to do it for just pennies less. So when you get into these larger scale programs, it's bigger stakes, it's, you know,

• 40:43Speaker 03

  High risk, high reward.

• 40:44Avery Trufelman?

  Yeah. We walked by some big, high-tech robots that are used for making footwear. Outdoor Research bought these for a military contract that didn't end up happening. The government had asked us to engage. We did. We were ready to go, and then they shifted course. So what are you going to do with the robots? I'm trying to sell the robots. So Outdoor Research has two completely different business models. They have their company, Outdoor Research, the retail brand. The outdoor side, where you've got seasonal forecasts and planning. And we spend two years developing new product. And on the military contracting side, it is a goddamn rodeo. For us, I mean, the government's our best customer, but they're also our worst. Like, they don't plan, and they can't give us a forecast. But then they'll come and they'll say, here's a large order out of nowhere.

• 41:28Avery Trufelman?

  And wow, that's great. Thank you so much. But now I can't fulfill it fast enough. Although, when a big government contract actually does work out, of course, that's great for business.

• 41:38Speaker 05

  So, you know, we have an 80/20 model, where the tactical business is 20% of our business.

• 41:43Avery Trufelman?

  Designer Kat Shewy again.

• 41:44Speaker 05

  And sometimes that balance shifts. Sometimes the tactical business is really, really good, and it helps to support the outdoor business when the outdoor business is in trouble. And oftentimes, vice versa. So it's actually great to be diversified in this way. As we learned through the pandemic, having US manufacturing was a lifesaver for us. I don't think we laid off a single person in the pandemic.

• 42:06Avery Trufelman?

  Having this factory is a special tool for a designer. It means that if Kat has an idea, she can go make a sample of it right there in the building. And government contracting is the way to keep this factory alive. It's this factory. It's the nature of this work. It's all part of why fabulous Kat is here in Seattle and not on Seventh Avenue. The fact that we do outfits are

• 42:32Speaker 06

  Troops for the harshest environments. That's like the most interesting design challenge.

• 42:37Avery Trufelman?

  And even though Kat mostly designs the civilian outdoor wear, still, all the tactical stuff, all the army gloves and the special ops clothes, they're all still being designed right here, side by side, in this one building. They all bleed into each other.

• 42:53Speaker 06

  So we have things that get developed for the military that then get commercialized in our outdoor space. And then we have vice versa. We have things that we build for the commercial side and they go into the military side.

• 43:06Avery Trufelman?

  Crossover is inevitable. Civilian clothes and military clothes end up sharing a lot of qualities. Outdoor research might literally produce the same jacket in two different colors, one for special ops and one for the outdoor industry. The outdoor industry jacket will probably be more colorful.

• 43:27Speaker 06

  And it might have a fun reflective logo on it and lots of pop trims.

• 43:32Avery Trufelman?

  And then for the tactical market, the same jacket might be in sleeker, darker Ranger green, or black, or coyote brown, or multicam.

• 43:40Speaker 06

  A little more toned down, functional and undercover.

• 43:43Avery Trufelman?

  In tactical clothes, the brand logos are muted or non-reflective.

• 43:48Speaker 06

  We do put OR logos on it, but they're tonal. They're subtle.

• 43:53Avery Trufelman?

  And that necessary stealthiness gives special operator outdoor clothes a very different look. It means these tactical clothes end up being high-performance, more expensive, harder to find, and quite simply, cooler looking. So, this is just me, a podcaster, putting pieces together. But, ever since the war on terror, there was a growing visibility of special forces and a growing number of high-end outdoor companies who were also making these lines of matte, sleek, outdoor clothes in black and coyote brown and Ranger green and multicam, right?

• 44:38Avery Trufelman?

  And if you recall the definition of Gorpcore from the inventor of the word Gorpcore, it went a little something like this.

• 44:47Speaker 04

  So it's been made a little bit chic-er. It's maybe made a little bit more streamlined. It's maybe crafted in better materials, maybe even more technical materials, but in cooler colors.

• 45:02Avery Trufelman?

  So can I tell you my personal

• 45:04Speaker 04

  Yes, please, please.

• 45:06Avery Trufelman?

  So I think, and I wonder if this is, if you've come across this.

• 45:09Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 45:09Avery Trufelman?

  I think one of the reasons that Gorpcore like came to be is because of special forces.

• 45:17Speaker 04

  Ooh, yeah.

• 45:18Avery Trufelman?

  You know that moment when Drake and Virgil Abloh wore their matching Arc'teryx Leaf jackets?

• 45:26Speaker 04

  Yes, yes, yes. Yes, exactly, exactly.

• 45:28Avery Trufelman?

  A peak moment in the ascent of Gorpcore was when Drake and the late Virgil Abloh were seated front row at a New York Fashion Week event in 2020. This was just before the pandemic, and they were wearing matching rain shells by Arc'teryx Leaf. Leaf stood for law enforcement and armed forces. Although Arc'teryx Leaf has recently rebranded as Arc'teryx Pro, whatever. Drake and Virgil's jackets both were in multicam. They were obviously tactical. And these jackets both cost $1,000. They instantly became grails, and people wanted them. Special operators had already been wearing these sleek, subtle, expensive outdoor clothes in the field for years, but fashion retailers and celebrities had just discovered them.

• 46:12Speaker 03

  I also think it was good marketing for the brand. Like, this product is so good, so technically advanced, that the police and the military use it.

• 46:20Avery Trufelman?

  That's my friend Peter. And the year Gorpcore was coined, Peter was working as a buyer for a niche luxury boutique in Manhattan.

• 46:27Speaker 03

  In 2017, I was buying menswear for Toto Caio.

• 46:31Avery Trufelman?

  Ugh, RIP Toto Caio. I loved that store. It was upscale and cutting-edge and kind of intimidating, but you always found something new. And back in 2017, Canada Goose was trying to get Toto Caio to stock their coats.

• 46:44Speaker 03

  But it wasn't the right fit. Canada Goose was, let's face it, not exactly cool. They made a great product. It was everywhere, but it wasn't cool.

• 46:55Avery Trufelman?

  In 2018, Canada Goose upped the offer. Instead of their normal parkas, they let Toto Caio sell their tactical coats, the ones Canada Goose had been producing for Canadian law enforcement for decades.

• 47:08Speaker 03

  Same quality, same styles, no logo patch.

• 47:11Avery Trufelman?

  It was sleek and rare and expensive and high performance.

• 47:15Speaker 03

  We got some really good press and it sold really, really fast.

• 47:20Avery Trufelman?

  So to be clear, I am not trying to insinuate that special ops fashion is solely responsible for Gorpcore. I am just saying chronologically, a lot of outdoor brands were making sleek muted jackets for police and special forces before they started making them for fashion.

• 47:37Speaker 06

  I don't think your theory is wrong.

• 47:39Avery Trufelman?

  I called Kat at Outdoor Research to run this by her.

• 47:42Speaker 06

  Tactical gear feels like it's at the root of the Gorpcore trend. We have pieces that we sell in our coyote and ranger green in our regular line that outsell some of the bright colors.

• 47:56Avery Trufelman?

  To use our prior example, Canada Goose since 2011 has sold their popular black label, their red logo is essentially blacked out, and it looks so similar to the tactical lines they had already been producing.

• 48:09Speaker 06

  I think people are gravitating to those tactically adjacent products and using them as fashion in their Gorpcore wardrobe.

• 48:20Avery Trufelman?

  If you want to take my little theory just one step further into the realm of conspiracy, you can just take or leave what seasoned consultant costume historian Charles McFarlane had to point out.

• 48:30Speaker 03

  You just happen to have Gorpcore coming up. At the same time, you have the global war on terror truly slowing down. I think there's a connection point there. The outdoor companies that had built a whole market that has opened up and developed over the years of the global war on terror.

• 48:45Speaker 06

  That then, as those wars slow down, which is happening from 2014 to 2017, like, that tactical market, it needs to go somewhere, and it can go into the fashion market.

• 48:59Speaker 04

  That's so interesting. Yeah, the paramilitary part of it never really came up.

• 49:03Avery Trufelman?

  Jason Chen seemed like, mm, half convinced of Gorp Corps' connection to the special forces.

• 49:09Speaker 04

  I think that it was more like, look at all of the badass shit you could accomplish in this gear, not necessarily with this military undertones to that.

• 49:22Avery Trufelman?

  Right.

• 49:22Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 49:23Avery Trufelman?

  Even though it's in camouflage.

• 49:24Speaker 04

  Right, exactly, exactly.

• 49:26Avery Trufelman?

  But regardless of whether there's causation or merely correlation between the rise of Gorp Corps and the visibility of the Navy SEALs, there is an undeniable connection between Gorp Corps and the military. I mean, a connection to the military is built into outdoor clothes and outdoor companies, even small, peaceful indie brands like Ikerkind. When they started their brand, it was during the pandemic. They had to start manufacturing domestically.

• 49:53Speaker 03

  The factory that we were in did military contracts.

• 49:56Avery Trufelman?

  This connection between the outdoor industry and the military is unavoidable. It's glaring. It's everywhere. I just didn't see it for many, many years. Like, before I started this series, I think I willfully ignored it for a very long time. And Annette LaFleur, the fashion designer for the military, got right to the reason why.

• 50:19Speaker 05

  In the end, yes, the number one priority is giving the soldier an enhanced capability to be more lethal, to not have them think about what they're wearing, per se, but to be able to focus on their mission and what they're supposed to be doing.

• 50:36Avery Trufelman?

  And that is what they're supposed to be doing: being lethal. That's what armies do. An army that isn't lethal is a bad army. So that shouldn't have shocked me. And yet, I was shocked. As a civilian, I was like, whoa. I hadn't heard anyone be that blunt. And for some reason, it was especially sobering to hear that from the military fashion designer, maybe because I spent so much time with all these outdoor designers talking about how these clothes are for safety and warmth and dryness and protection. But in the military, yeah, it's ultimately for this, it's for killing. And what Annette is implying is that these uniforms she's made, these adjustable

• 51:16Avery Trufelman?

  uniforms that come in many different sizes, are lethal, that this American army, full of many different people, in many different shapes and sizes, is already pretty frickin' dangerous. But lethality is something that our current Secretary of War is obsessed with. Pete Hegseth is like, our military needs to be more lethal. And he wants to accomplish this by narrowing the definition of what a soldier is. And many minority officers and female officers have left the force or been asked to leave. It's increasingly becoming a military that looks less and less like the general American

• 51:56Avery Trufelman?

  public, which is terrifying, as this powerful force, which historically has been directed outwardly, turns inward.

• 52:16Avery Trufelman?

  Articles of Interest is by Avery Trufelman, with careful edits and loving sense-making by Alison Behringer. Consultant on this season is Charles McFarlane, with fact-checking by Yasmin Alsayad, and music by Ray Royal, Lulatone, and Sasami, and mixing and mastering by Jocelyn Gonzalez. Special thanks to industry expert Emily Walzer and Brian Davis of Wooden Sleepers, shoe designer Adara Delaboe, and Dr. Amber Williams of Utah State University. Thank you to Drew Haupt, and thank you, dear listener. If you would like to remember that famous picture of Drake and Virgil Abloh, I mean, you could Google that picture. Or you could just go to articlesofinterest.substack.com, and I'll already have it pulled up for you.