What Happened to Gorpcore Brands?
A post-mortem of one of sportswear's most viral trends.
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The most-read piece in SportsVerse history (all six months of it) was an investigation into how the “personal style” epidemic was changing how key players in the sportswear market operate.
It got me thinking about the fate of “gorpcore”, one of the category’s higher profile trends in recent years. “Gorp” (which derives from the popular “Good Old Raisins and Peanuts” trail mix snack) refers to the widespread adoption of outdoors gear like hiking, climbing and trail running apparel and footwear for everyday fashion use. Core is the annoying suffix that marketers feel the need to attach to the end of everything these days to denote when something is a “viral trend”.
A couple of years ago, it was all anyone in the fashion and streetwear world could speak about. Many brands that had previously operated almost exclusively to serve hardcore, nerdy proponents of these pursuits suddenly found their products being called in for editorial shoots and appearing on the cool kids at fashion week and Coachella. It became customary to do grocery shopping or go to your friend’s birthday party wearing a $1,000+ rain and windproof shell jacket originally designed for Arctic exploration.
High-quality performance brands like Arc’teryx and Salomon (which had been quietly making inroads into fashion in the late 2010s) exploded in popularity during the pandemic, when everyone began craving a connection to nature and the outdoors.
Arc’teryx was adopted by everyone from Frank Ocean to Drake to Virgil Abloh to Central Cee. Salomon began a long running collaboration with MM6 Maison Margiela and literally every other edgy fashion brand or retailer who picked up the phone. All of a sudden, the most coveted sneaker on resale sites was no longer Nike’s Panda Dunk, but Salomon’s XT-6 trail shoe. Even previously uncool outdoor footwear brands like Merrell began bolstering their sportstyle divisions in order to provide fashion-forward adaptations of their suddenly coveted footwear.
Brands like 66 North — an Icelandic outerwear company that had quietly existed for nearly a century — began claiming their place in the fashion world too, opening flagship stores, brokering collaborations with fashion designers, hosting fashion week events, and in the case of 66, even hiring a creative director from Louis Vuitton. Luxury giants like Zegna decided they wanted in on this space too, making investments in upstart brands like trail running specialists Norda.
This trend had a big fiscal impact on brands, too. Both Salomon and Arc’teryx (both owned by Finish sportswear conglomerate Amer Sports, which in turn is backed by China’s Anta Sports — keep up) passed $1 billion in annual revenue in recent years, thanks in no small part to booming sales and brand awareness caused by consumers’ unlikely fascination with outdoors-adjacent clothing and footwear.
But all of a sudden, the noise died down. The relentless trend cycle rolled on. Brands and designers started calling their outdoors-inspired collections anything but gorpcore. The fashion kids began trading their chunky XT-6 for Adidas’ low-rise Sambas and Gazelles.
A quick look at Google Trends data shows that global searches for “gorpcore” peaked in 2023 and have been tailing off ever since, save for a smaller spike earlier this year.
What Happened After Gorpcore?
Just because outdoor clothing and footwear are no longer an obsession of fashion consumers and marketers doesn’t mean the entire category is obsolete. It still caters to the plethora of consumers who actually take part in outdoor activities and snowsports who have shopped from these brands for decades and drive the bulk of their sales.
In fact, one of the main reasons why outdoor brands became so popular as lifestyle items in the first place was the fact that their products represented great value for money, and could be styled in new ways too. Instead of spending thousands of dollars on clothes from a luxury brand, you could spend the same amount or less on an Arc’teryx puffer jacket and trousers designed to withstand extreme conditions and insulate you from freezing temperatures.
The same goes for footwear. It makes more sense to a lot of people to purchase Salomon’s trail shoes used by ultramarathon runners, rather than splashing out on a pair of uncomfortable retro basketball sneakers or hard-soled shoes with no performance technology — even if you’re only using them to commute to work in. As prices of luxury goods continue to rise, these arguments only become more compelling.
Fortunately, many of the outdoor brands that were successful before the mainstream popularity of gorpcore were disciplined in not watering down their core equipment and apparel businesses that for decades had been popular with everyday participants of outdoor activities.
Arc’teryx was smart to invest in its fashion-forward Veilance line, while Salomon did well to become a genuine streetwear and sneaker player through its Sportstyle division, again, without needing to reorient its business completely to meet transient fashion demand for a small segment of its products. Salomon has made specific investments in building out its lifestyle offering with dedicated sportstyle flagship stores in London, Paris and New York.
Meanwhile, many of these products (like Salomon’s XT-6) are still being discovered by mainstream consumers now that they are more readily available in high street stores. Part of what drove the initial hype around gorpcore was that the supply of many of these popular styles was so low because brands were caught (pleasantly) off guard and didn’t have enough units in stock to meet initial demand.
Amer Sports, which owns Salomon and Arc’teryx as well as several other outdoor brands, doesn’t seem to have been affected in any way by the receding gorpcore trend. It reported record sales of $1.47 billion for the first quarter of 2025, up 23 percent from the same period the year before. Its shares are up 150 percent since its 2024 IPO, and up 55 percent in the past month.
But there will be many other companies which experienced a bump in sales they are likely never to recapture now that mainstream hype around this subcategory has tailed off.
And that, is simply how it goes when you’re at the mercy of the blender that is the fashion industry’s trend cycle.
That’s all for today, friends. Thanks for coming along for the ride.
See you next time,
DYM
Gorpcore got adopted by roadmen and fuckboys.. It died a gruesome death..