How Do You Trace a Century of the Great Outdoors? Look at the Catalogs (hypebeast.com)

Utah State University’s Outdoor Recreation Archive (ORA) currently encompasses around 3,000 outdoor catalogs from around 200 companies, ranging from a 1905 Abercrombie & Fitch catalog to a 2020 Altra Running catalog. Created as a joint effort between Utah’s State University’s Special Collections & Archives and the Outdoor Product Development and Design undergraduate program, the ORA is, in simple terms, a research collection of outdoor recreation history. And yet the seemingly niche academic project happens to fit perfectly with the ever-growing popularity of the outdoor style in contemporary fashion.

2020 saw the outdoor aesthetic boom in even greater popularity, with notable collaborations such as the Salehe Bembury x New Balance 2002 sneaker, the Greater Goods x Arc’teryx Artist Series, the Palace x Salomon XA COMP ADV sneaker taking center stage.

In that context, the ORA acts as the handy tool for tracing the evolution of the outdoor style, allowing us to explore how the style of performance and outdoor gear has shifted over time. Key factors in the industry such as design, product and material innovation, and branding and marketing can be traced, timestamped and attributed to in one convenient place.

The physical collection, initially launched back in March 2019, is currently housed at the University and a digital exhibit lives on Utah State’s library website for anyone to access. The ORA has also taken to exhibiting the archive on Instagram, launching an account in September later that year to reach a wider, non-academic audience and help grow interest around the history of the outdoor industry.
more at source: https://hypebeast.com/2020/11/outdoor-recreation-archive-utah-university-interview

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