The Right Fabric for the Right Job (Not Every Piece Should Be Bamboo)

Ask five different outdoor brands what fabric is best and you'll get five confident, contradictory answers. The honest answer is that the question itself is a little bit wrong. There's no single best fabric, only the best fabric for a specific job.

The short answer: bamboo is exceptional against skin, worn all day, which is why it's the fabric for base layers and sun shirts. Polyester fleece is exceptional at trapping warmth without eating your whole suitcase, which is why it's the fabric for a packable warm layer. Quick-dry polyester blends are exceptional at going from soaked to dry fast, which is why they're the fabric for anything that needs to survive a lake swim and a hike in the same afternoon.

Why bamboo wins for anything touching skin first

Naturally moisture-wicking, naturally odor-resistant at a fiber level, soft enough to wear all day without irritation. That's the specific job bamboo does better than almost anything else, which is exactly why our base layers and sun shirts stay bamboo.

Why polyester fleece wins for packable warmth

A thin microgrid fleece traps warm air in a way that takes up a fraction of the space a heavier natural-fiber sweater would. When a warm layer needs to disappear into a bag until it's actually needed, that's a job synthetic does better, which is exactly why our upcoming fleece uses it.

Why quick-dry polyester wins for wet-to-dry days

A lake swim into a hike needs fabric that dries fast enough not to chafe or chill on the trail afterward, which is exactly what a quick-dry polyester blend does that natural fiber generally can't match. Our upcoming swim and hike sets are built around exactly this handoff.

The honest version of best for the job

We're not choosing synthetic or natural as a philosophy. We're choosing whichever one actually does the specific job better, piece by piece. Same reason our sustainability page has always said it, best for the job, not one fiber for everything.

Quick FAQ

Does that mean synthetic fabric is fine?
Yes, when it's doing the job it's actually good at. The fiber matters less than whether it fits the task.

Will your polyester items smell the way generic synthetic activewear does?
Any polyester can develop the same odor-retention tendency over time, ours included, that's a property of the fiber, not a flaw. It matters far less for a fleece layered over a base layer, or swimwear rinsed after each use, than it would for something worn directly against skin all day, which is exactly why those all-day pieces stay bamboo.

How do I know which fabric a specific piece uses and why?
We'll always tell you plainly, part of the same honesty this whole month is about.

Is one fiber more sustainable than the other?
It depends on the use case and how long the piece actually gets worn, not the fiber alone, which is really the whole point of choosing by job instead of by ideology.