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The Legendary Eddie Bower: America’s Down Jacket King
Are we ready for a little Eddie Bauer history lesson? Are you ready to discover who is Eddie Bauer? Vintage Eddie Bower is one of the most interesting brands of all time. For 40 years, Eddie Bower himself was the authority on down jackets. Today, we are touching on what made him that legend.
Boom! Eddie Bower moves into full wartime production and makes 1,000 sleeping bags for the US military, sends them to the US Military, and they basically say, “Holy crap, you are the only actual company that did this. Everybody else is delinquent. Can you make more?”
Most down jackets, you know, you could really crush them and compress them. The B9 has so many feathers that it’s just like a rock. I remember my uncle telling me in Russia they had these big jackets filled with goose down. It might seem kind of ineffective at first, but we have a very short zipper. It actually only goes to here. We have all this extra room. Why is that? And this is the beginning of the story.
Grab Your Popcorn For This Epic Clothing Brand Story
Please strap in, get some popcorn and a hot beverage, and listen to one of my favorite clothing brand stories of all time. Eddie Bower was a bit different clothing brand when Mr. Bower himself was at the helm of the company, and by a bit different, I mean the greatest American outdoor clothing brand of all time.
I’m currently wearing the jacket Mr. Bower himself designed to get America on the top of Mount Everest. It’s a tank and it’s called the Everest Parka.But also, there’s a jacket from 1943, and if you were flying a plane in 1943, you wanted this jacket. This was the greatest jacket you could possibly get.
He was so genius that basically the entire United States military kept calling Eddie Bauer and being like, “You got to help us,” to the point where when they ran out of feathers and down plumes, which we’re going to differentiate those two because those are very important, they called Eddie and were like, “What can you do?” And he was like, “Oh, I have an idea. Curl chicken feathers! Feather fill!” Interesting.
The Man Who Made Down Jackets Famous
I know I said this a million billion times, but the big thing with Eddie Bauer history is that he’s the guy who popularized down jackets. We’re going to skip that part. This is probably his second most famous jacket ever created.
This is the K2, called the “finest cold weather high altitude article of clothing I have ever seen,” by a man who fell off of K2, one of the most dangerous mountains in the world.
Point of all this is Eddie Bower and his wife, once they retired from creating this brand, which was at the time considered one of the greatest outdoor clothing brands, they won tennis, golfing, more shooting competitions, and a dog competition. They carried perfectionism throughout their entire life.
They dominated everything. So it’s only fitting that if they made a clothing brand, it would be the greatest in the world, and for a while, it really undisputably, was. The Bowers died within 15 days of one another, and Eddie Bower called Stine Bower his greatest outdoor companion. Stine Bower was also a fantastic painter. I very much like her paintings.
From Russia To Seattle: The Bower Family Story
Eddie Bower was born in America, but his family came over from Russia and cozied up to the Dennys, who were basically the founding members of Seattle. They were making Seattle, and they got so cozy with them they gave the Bowers 2 acres of land in downtown Seattle, which that is like an unfathomable amount of money.
That is an unbelievable value today. Eddie Bower’s dad, a crack businessman, sold it nine years after he got it so he could go work at a plum farm and dry prunes. So, oops.
Shuttlecocks And The Birth Of A Business Empire
Fast forward a little bit, and Eddie Bower is meeting wealthy land owners and helping them farm game birds and everything like that, getting into the business, and he starts his first business: Eddie Bower’s tackle shop.
It mainly focuses on restringing tennis rackets and badminton rackets because badminton and just outdoor recreational activities, in general, were getting very popular around the Great Depression. Shuttlecocks were needed for badminton, but the shuttlecocks were very expensive because they were coming from Europe. So Eddie said, “I can fix that,” and he did.
Shuttlecocks, as you know, around the outside importantly use feathers, so Eddie had to meet people that could get him feathers. The business exploded, and all of a sudden, he was like, “Wow, I need my own shuttlecock factory,” which he made right above his tackle shop.
Bing, bang, boom! He has a flourishing business, money is coming in, and he knows a lot of wealthy people. Money is very important. That is the big theme here.
The Near-Death Experience That Changed Everything
The genius thing for Eddie, though, is that he ran a seasonal business because when it got cold, most people didn’t care if their tennis or badminton rackets weren’t strong. They didn’t need shuttlecocks.
So Eddie left, and he went hunting and fishing and doing all this great fun outdoor stuff. On one of those trips, Eddie had a big thing of fish on his back, and he said to his friend, “Here, take my really heavy wool coat, ’cause these fish are heavy,” and then he essentially died. He almost died.
I thought Eddie Bower was saying the problem with his wool jacket was that he took it off because it was too warm, but in reality, what he said in this interview was he took it off because it was too heavy, and he wanted to create a down jacket because that was light enough where he didn’t care about the extra weight on his back when he was trekking through the woods holding something that was also very heavy. It was to save weight, not add warmth.
Inside Eddie’s Mind: The Birth Of The Down Jacket
So I’m assuming Eddie Bower recovers from his hypothermia, and he’s like, “Oh, wait a minute, the solution is I remember my uncle telling me in Russia they had these big jackets filled with goose down. My shuttlecocks use feathers. I think I saw this advertisement in 1928 about a sleeping bag with baffled feathers. I’ll put all that together and make a really light jacket.”
And the final thing that kind of tied everything together was that Eddie Bower was already a successful businessman who was doing well and had clients that were also doing very, very well because wool was far cheaper than down and feathers because the US didn’t have a lot of byproducts from waterfowl. That just wasn’t in the diet of the American people.
Alaskan Bush Pilots And The Down Flight Suit
The important thing about this jacket was Eddie Bauer made a down jacket when I feel like everybody else was trying to lower costs along with engineering it to be lighter at every possible place that he could be with the fabric, with the fill, everything like that.
We’ll talk about what mode my hood is in right now, but essentially, Eddie Bauer’s jackets, as I said, were a hit right out of the gate. People love them, specifically professional pilots.
The down parka and the down trousers, when put together, made the down flight suit, and Alaskan bush pilots were like, “This is the most amazing jacket I’ve ever had in my entire life.” And then, all of a sudden, everything changed very, very fast.
When War Calls: Eddie Bower Answers
There was a ship going from Seattle to Alaska that sunk, and on that ship, there were down sleeping bags, a bunch of other cold weather gear, and snow shoots, most importantly. So what happened was the US government, the military, called Eddie Bower and said, “Eddie, it’s gone time.
You need to get every single cold weather sleeping bag and cold weather gear you can possibly get in the United States of America and send it to us now.” Planes are flying, war is going on, Saving Private Ryan is being filmed, all this stuff is happening.
And Eddie Bower calls the United States outdoor American legends themselves: Mr. Leon Leonwood Bean, Mr. Abercrombie, Mr. Fitch, Mr. Woods. Legends of the United States outdoor service, whatever you want to call it, are being phoned by the legend himself, Eddie Bower, and Eddie’s saying, “Send everything!”
The Wartime Production Mastermind
So now trucks in Maine, Wisconsin, New York City, and all around the entire country are being loaded up with the finest gear the country can make and being sent to Seattle to Eddie Bower’s house, where he will then distribute them. Boom! Another bomb drops. All of a sudden, the US government says there is no commercial use of feathers or down products at all. Needs to go to the military.
So Eddie Bower collaborates with Ducks Unlimited and says, “Hey, hunters all around the United States, if you are shooting waterfowl, send in the feathers, send in the down to me. I will clean them. We need them for the war.”
Boom! Eddie Bower moves into full wartime production and makes 1,000 sleeping bags for the US military, sends them to the US Military, and they basically say, “Holy crap, you are the only actual company that did this. Everybody else is delinquent. Can you make more?”
Eddie Bower makes a thousand more, and the US military is essentially like, “This guy is our guy. Eddie Bower is our guy.” The government orders 10,000 pack boards and requests them to be delivered in 2 days. Eddie Bower pulls in another manufacturer. They hit the deadline.
Since Eddie Bower designed the jacket that everybody was copying, he was way faster. He was undercutting the competition. He was making things cheaper, better, and faster, and even packing them more efficiently so you could store more and transport more at the same time, save money, and be more effective. A monster!
The Legendary B9 Parka: A Beast Of A Jacket
I am wearing the legend from that era—the B9 Parka. This is an incredibly heavy jacket, one because of the materials on the inside, and it’s very beautiful, and this is like silk.
It’s gorgeous. But this is not filled solely with down. It’s down and feathers because the US did not have a surplus of both.
One year before this exact jacket is made, Eddie Bower gets a call that says, “Hey Eddie, I know you’re making 200,000 sleeping bags a year for us, but we need you on something even more important in Ohio. Please get here immediately.” Eddie Bower says, “Sorry that your voice cracked. That was awkward.”
That call that Eddie Bauer received was essentially the US military saying, “Hey, design this jacket, the B9 Parka, a jacket that needs to keep a pilot warm at -70° for 3 hours while they are flying a plane.”
It’s not the puffiest jacket in the world, but wow, I do. I overheat in it very, very fast. It’s like 30 outside, so that’s probably why.
B9 Parka Tech Specs: Rock-Solid Warmth
Most down jackets, you know, you could really crush them and compress them. The B9, this one specifically, has so many feathers that it’s just like a rock. It doesn’t really compress, and that makes it way, way heavier.
The entire sleeve is reinforced with another layer of cotton. We also have this double gusset system under the arm to give you a lot more mobility. It might seem kind of ineffective at first, but we have a very short zipper.
It actually only goes to here. We have all this extra room. Why is that? The majority of the time that you’re wearing this jacket, you will be sitting down.
Then, finally, we have this giant bump on the back of my neck. I think I’m doing this right. This is the collar mode of a mouton hood. It converts into a hood that you could wear like a regular hood, and it’s not a big giant hood that goes over your face.
It is for maximum visibility, so you can look out side to side, but also, it was very important that this hood was sealed completely around your face to keep in the maximum amount of warmth.
But something we also have right here is a really cool neck wind blocker, and what I like about it is how many times we can tighten it.
The K2 Jacket And An Epic Mountaineering Tale
K2, the second-highest mountain in the world, is one of the most dangerous mountains in the world. This is a jacket that was designed for climbing, and this jacket, this specific one that I’m wearing right now, this bad boy was owned previously by a mountaineer, someone that was climbing mountains, and the man wearing it almost died on Mount Whitney. So this is really as tough as it can get.
And most of the climbers were from Seattle, so obviously they went up to their man Eddie Bower and said, “Hey, can you design us a jacket that is very light, very strong, gives us a lot of movement?” It also should be able to be cinched around the waist and, although I don’t really use this one much at all, should be able to be cinched down around the bottom of the jacket as well.
Eddie Bower said, “Absolutely! I would freaking love that. That is great marketing for me. Let’s go, boys!” So they set out to do it, and they got all the way to Camp 8, and then there was a terrible storm. So they hunkered down for a while, and then a man named Art Gilkey was going from one tent to another.
He was a geologist—not that that matters for the story. On his way, he collapsed from pain in his leg that he thought was a cramp. His legs were clotting, both of them, which is obviously no good when you have to climb one of the most dangerous mountains in the world.
The Belay Heard Around The World
Here’s where the Eddie Bauer history lesson gets thrilling! So, the team abandoned their climb and started to go down to Camp 7. Descent was going quite well, but all of a sudden George Bell slips and falls and basically starts a chain reaction, and five other men start falling as well.
Pete Schoening, the youngest member of the team and one of the members who did not have experience climbing mountains this high, is at the top with a belay, an ice axe, and a boulder in front of him. Everybody’s falling. He starts to see the slip. He clams his ice axe behind the boulder, holds on, and arrests the fall of all of the men.
There was a new nylon rope that they said stretched to half its length, but it still held, and that entire group of men was dangling as Pete Schoening was just being the freaking Hulk. And the reason they said they had him on the actual expedition was because he always had a cheery demeanor.
Even though the climb was not a success, the story is obviously a legend, and the jacket that went with it was called one of the greatest cold weather high altitude jackets ever made, and the press was insane. The story is that Kara Koram was born.
The “Strange” Eddie Bower Style
I made a short about this jacket and this mask already, and I said Eddie Bower used to be a little strange. People took issue with the fact that I said “strange.” Are we seeing the same thing? Does this not seem strange to you? Do you see this when you walk your dog every day?
Everybody’s like, “Hey neighbor, how’s it going?” This is Eddie Bower’s down balaclava mask from the 1970s. Big ribbing in the back. It is very warm on your face. I can’t imagine climbing a mountain wearing this and sweating into this. I feel like it would be miserable.
Conquering Everest: The Iconic Expedition Jacket
Anyways, this is the jacket that was made for America to get on top of Mount Everest, specifically by a man named Jim Whitaker, although his brother was also very involved, his twin brother Lou Whitaker.
And it’s cool to see this history because there are still like 4K interviews with Jim Whitaker, which is awesome. Seems like a very nice guy.
This is that jacket designed to climb Mount Everest, and it does look a lot cooler when Jim Whitaker, who’s much bigger than me, is standing on Mount Everest waving the United States flag and wearing it.
You wouldn’t think it’s the same jacket. It’s just a monster of down. That’s really it. And it also uses a new fun—well, two fun technologies: the first one is velcro, and then, of course, we’re using nylon now.
This jacket is absolutely just stuffed to the gills with down, and the big point of nylon was you could make the jacket even lighter and stuff more down in it to make it warm while having it be really, really compressible. So that’s the big deal here. And oh, and we have this hood, which reminds me of a really bad hair dye job.
Wolverine fur on the inside because that’s the most frost resistant, and then coyote guard fur on the outside to finish the job to keep a little warm pocket of air around your face so your breath doesn’t freeze.
Jim Whitaker’s Epic Comeback Line
The coolest story about Jim, well, besides climbing Mount Everest, the coolest story is 50 years after his ascent at an event celebrating his ascent, his jacket was in a museum. It was all fancy preserved as it should be.
He stood up, Jim Whitaker, in front of everybody in his 80s and said if he was going to climb Everest again, he would need to get his jacket back. You know, Jim was in the car being like, “Oh, that’s going to hit so hard when I say that.”
There’s a whole documentary on Mr. Whitaker’s ascent, so you should definitely watch that. It’s very, very cool. But that is where we see a big, big change in Eddie Bower and how we get to Eddie Bower that we have today.
The Insane Hood System: Eddie’s Final Masterpiece
But there is one last jacket that I would like to show you, ’cause the hood is insane. The hood is the best part of the whole jacket. Notice the fur on this jacket. This is the Kara Koram expedition in avocado, called avocado by Eddie Bower himself.
Oh, you’ll see they tucked in first thing. They tucked in the storm cuffs, so now they’re a little more protected. But also, we have the sick 1970s Eddie Bauer buttons, which are so cool.
This jacket represents a very important series of events. One: In the 1960s and 1970s, outdoor activities and stuff like that were exploding. North Face, Patagonia, all these brands are rising.
Fleece is getting super popular. Jackets are being made cheaper in different areas in different ways. People have preferences. Eddie Bower isn’t the undisputed king, and also, I, maybe it would have been, but Eddie Bower sold his company to his partner in 1968 to spend time with his wife, Stine.
Eddie Bower got sold a lot, a lot of different leadership, but look at this hood. Let me show you this real quick. This entire crazy hood system was designed in response to fur not being popular on down jackets anymore. So it’s pretty insane.
The first thing you’ll notice immediately gives you full Homer Simpson and the amount of warmth in this little cone of down is incredibly immense. It is warming up my entire head. You could feel it. And then this little down-stuffed brim is Eddie Bower’s solution to not having fur on the outside.
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Bring Back The Classics, Please!
I live in Maine now, as you know, and if I go to a thrift store and I see L.L. Bean boots from the ’50s or the ’60s or something, they look the exact or close to the exact same that they do now. You can’t really tell. This is a 1960s Kara Koram. This is their Kara Koram for modern days.
If modern-day Eddie Bower just—they just made a few, they don’t have to make a ton, I know it won’t sell, you’re going for the cheaper market and everything like that—they just made a few pretty period accurate K2s, Skyliners, B9s, just made them monsters, I would just be all over those things.
You can get a duck boot from anywhere nowadays, but it’s like, I want the L.L. Bean one because they made it. They invented it. I’d go gaga if they did that.
The good news, though, is we essentially have an Eddie Bower in spirit, and that is Crescent Down Works, made in Seattle, Washington. The founder of the brand, Ann Mickelson, worked with Eddie Bower in his down testing lab in 1969. That is as close as you can get to Eddie Bower of old.
Okay, anyway, that’s about it for who is Eddie Bauer? today. Thank you for watching. I really do appreciate it. I will see you all soon! Okay, bye!
This article was adapted from Michael Kristy’s video on The Iron Snail, with edits from FashionBeans, and was reviewed by Michael to ensure the integrity of his original content. Watch the full video here.
The Iron Snail is a men’s fashion vlog (and now article series!) starring a young man named Michael and featuring a snail no bigger than a quarter. The two are set on taking over the world of fashion by creating a clothing line to end all clothing lines. Until then, we’re here to tell you EVERYTHING you need to know about the best clothing out there, from the highest quality raw denim jeans to the warmest jackets to the sturdiest boots…the Iron Snail has got you covered.
