Mountain Style: British Outdoor Clothing 1953-2000

I have always liked clothes. Maybe too much.

Before studying graphic design and typography, I studied fashion. At the time I probably didn’t know exactly what I was looking for, but I remember being very attracted to garments as objects. Not only how they looked, but how they were built. A seam, a pocket, a collar, the weight of a fabric, the way a jacket changes when someone wears it for years.

Later came climbing, skiing, walking in the mountains, and spending more time outside. And then clothing became something else. Less image, more tool. Less “look”, more consequence.

But the funny thing is that the more functional clothing becomes, the more interesting it gets.

A good mountain garment is never innocent. It has opinions. It tells you what kind of weather it was made for, what kind of body it imagined, what kind of movement it understood. Sometimes it is clever. Sometimes it is ugly. Sometimes it is both. And sometimes, without trying, it becomes beautiful.

That is why I like Mountain Style so much.

There is a lot in the book that I love, but one thing that really stayed with me is how human everything feels. People smoking in the mountains. People wearing strange layers. People looking cold, tired, happy, badly dressed, perfectly dressed, not really aware that one day all of this would become “outdoor culture”.

That part is great.

Today everything around the outdoors feels very professional. Very measured. Very clean. Training plans, recovery, GPS tracks, race vests, carbon poles, perfect layering systems, technical language for everything. And that is fine. A lot of it is useful. But sometimes it also makes the mountains feel a bit too serious.

In Mountain Style, the outdoor world still feels a bit more amateur. Not in a bad way. More improvised. More local. More full of characters. People were doing big things in big places, but the attitude feels different. Less super-performance, more getting on with it.

I like that.

On paper, the book is about British outdoor clothing. But to me it feels more like a book about how people invent things when they need them. Someone is cold, so they make something warmer. Someone is wet, so they search for a better fabric. Someone needs to move, climb, carry, repair, pack, survive a long day outside. Then a pocket appears. A hood changes shape. A label is sewn in. A colour is chosen. A brand is born almost by accident.

And years later, we look back and call it style.

That is the part I find beautiful.

Not style as something added at the end. Not styling. Not fashion in the superficial sense. But style as the trace of use, need, place and time. The result of many small decisions made by people who were probably thinking more about rain than about culture.

The book is full of that. Jackets that look strangely current. Labels that are better than most logos being made today. Fits that are completely off and somehow perfect. Colours that feel impossible until you see them in the right landscape. Catalogues that make you want to disappear into a wet hill somewhere with a map, something warm to drink and a questionable layering system.

There is something very human in these garments. They are technical, but not sterile. They have character. You can feel the hand of small makers, climbers, walkers, designers and obsessives trying to solve real problems with limited tools and very specific ideas.

That world feels close to Amunt.

We are bringing Mountain Style into the Amunt shop because it speaks to many of the things we like to look at: outdoor clothing, archive, function, colour, use, and the quiet culture around all of it.

It is not just about old jackets. It is about the world around them.

And yes, it is also a very good book about jackets.

Which, honestly, is more than enough.

Martí Canillas

Creative Director and Co-founder of Amunt