Most outdoorsy menswear lands on either side of a spectrum: highly advanced and highly anodyne, or a little too focused on form over function. Very few brands in the outdoors space make clothing you could plausibly call “fun”, and even fewer make clothing that’s not only fun but functional and faithful to the original source material. In fact, the list of brands exclusively focused on the area of overlap in that particular Venn diagram is really one name long: Big Rock Candy Mountaineering.
Big Rock Candy Mountaineering launched in 2024 as the brainchild of founders Samuel Hardeman and Peter Middleton, industry veterans who cut their teeth at a who’s who of beloved independent brands. (If you’re a flannel guy, you might know Middleton as the founder of Wythe.) From the outset, BRCM eschewed all Gore-Tex everything for gear that harkens back to an era when getting active outside—hiking, climbing, backpacking—felt a bit more irreverent, and, frankly, a lot less dull.
In other words, Hardeman explains, “casual outdoor clothing for the casual outdoorsman.” Hardeman, who put in time working for the prep revivalists at Rowing Blazers, might engage in all three of those activities recreationally, but he’s also a dad in his 30s. “I’m not doing crazy stuff,” he says with a laugh.
Nor are the bulk of his customers. Most dudes are, at best, casual outdoorsmen. And while that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t shop for clothing that could handle an eight-thousander, buying clothing specifically for that reason is probably missing the forest for the trees—especially when the forest looks like BRCM. “We’re not the performance brand,” Hardeman says. “We’re the casual outdoors brand with good style.”
For instance, BRCM’s flagship Arctic Parka is a dead ringer for the Eddie Bauer Style #088 puffer that was worn to summit Everest in the ‘60s—down to the royal blue-and-yellow colorway. Which means it’ll have no problem insulating you from winter without looking dated because, well, it already crossed that bridge decades ago, and returned to tell the tale. (Theoretically speaking, that makes it more than able to make it to the top of K2, but you probably shouldn’t try that wearing it—or any other jacket, for that matter. K2 is a very dangerous mountain.)
If you’re in need of a big-ass coat, the sleeper of the whole collection might be the Bridalveil jacket, a down-packed button-up that sounds a bit inessential in theory, but somehow becomes utterly essential in practice. The same could be said for the half-zip Metanoia sweater, a delightfully bonkers knit that boasts the kind of cozy-but-cool disposition that makes your other sweaters immediately feel way too precious.
Looking for pants? (Of course you are.) There might not be a better pair for any remotely muddy activity than BRCM’s duck canvas double-knees, a not-too-distant relative of Patagonia’s legendary Stand-Up pants cut significantly wider and with far more pliability, correcting the two biggest complaints about the original reference. That, it turns out, is a pretty common theme across the brand’s assortment: take an idea from the past and apply a different methodology to the design process, creating something new that still feels comfortingly familiar.
There’s a reason for the approach. Most outdoors brands distinguish themselves by focusing on boundary-pushing design, merging cutting-edge fabric technology with good ol’-fashioned functionality. Hardeman and Middleton appreciate the utilitarian beauty distinct to that type of clothing, and have a healthy amount of respect for the brands cultivating it.
Ultimately, Hardeman says, “there’s only a handful of people in the world that need gear at [that level of] capability.” The market for menswear that could theoretically summit a mountain without looking out of place at an inn upstate? Much bigger—and hopefully growing by the day.
