Amundsen Challenges the Cotton Controversy With New Natural Outerwear Line

During a multi-year voyage through the Northwest Passage, the legendary Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen and his crew lived on the remote King William Island in the Canadian Arctic for two winters from 1903 to 1905. While there, they surveyed the harsh landscape and charted unknown waters, but their time was also marked by careful study of the Inuit people’s local knowledge of cold-weather survival. While other explorers sought new technologies to face these climates, Amundsen looked to the past, knowing the Inuit had lived for generations in harmony with the land and had gained intimate knowledge of its workings. The use of dog sleds, igloos, and traditional Inuit clothing proved vital to the eventual success of the expedition in 1906. Amundsen would go on to use these skills in becoming the first man to set foot on the South Pole in 1911.

At Amundsen Sports, this strategy of looking back to the wisdom of tradition, while also looking forward to new frontiers, has guided our product development. With our namesake in mind, we’ve tried to ask critical questions of our industry: Where are the quality wool and cotton garments that were used for thousands of years to move comfortably across various landscapes? What happened to the versatile outdoor wardrobe? Why did we replace natural materials with plastics?

Cotton has been forgotten—even vilified—by the outdoor industry. Growing up, we all heard the phrase “Cotton Kills” in the outdoors, because it gets wet and stays wet, leaving you cold. But the more we questioned this adage, the less it made sense as an absolute truth. Yes, cotton can get wet and make you cold if it's next to your skin, but it's also extremely breathable, durable, and organic. Was there an opportunity to reimagine cotton’s utility as an outer shell—one that wasn’t noisy or plastic and didn’t break down after a few seasons? We’ve always felt that heavier GORE-TEX products are too waterproof and not breathable enough for most days and lead to too many stops to delayer and re-layer. Roald and his crew certainly didn't have it up near the 68th parallel at the turn of the century.

These questions led us to seek out ways to create natural products that don’t rely on heavy plastics or PFAS treatments, while still holding up to the demanding tasks of backcountry life. There's also something intriguing and freeing about using something from nature in nature—as if there was one less barrier between us and our surroundings.

The more we explored, the more innovation we found in cotton designed for the outdoors. Ventile, for example, was developed in 1943 for WWII pilots who needed breathability in the cockpit, but also weatherproofing if they were shot down or adrift at sea.

Made exclusively of tightly woven cotton, Ventile was also later used by Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay during the first summit of Mt. Everest in 1953, and by Sir Ranulph Fiennes during his Arctic crossing from 1979 to 1982. Inspired by this material, we designed the Vidda Kit, which we believe is the most versatile and capable clothing on the outdoor market. It breathes better than plastic, looks better with age, and is 100% organic.

With Ventile’s legacy as a guide, we challenged ourselves to innovate further in order to create clothing for our favorite activity: skiing. This was both a product-level challenge and a cultural one, given the industry's dependence on plastic and cotton’s misunderstood reputation.

We developed a three-layer shell—possibly the first of its kind—as the basis for the Peak Cotton Capsule. With the inner and outer layers composed of organic cotton, sandwiching an internal micro-spun membrane, the shell of our Peak Cotton suit allows the garment to remain water-resistant, while retaining cotton's unparalleled breathability. The result isn't just a great ski jacket, it's gear we’re proud of—better for the customer and better for the planet.

Some technological advances are undeniably beneficial (we won’t be returning to wooden skis anytime soon). But we believe that in the ceaseless voyage toward innovation, ancient wisdom for outdoor life has been overlooked. Perhaps, like Amundsen learned from the Inuit, we can rediscover simple and effective ways of moving through nature. While we don’t expect seal-skin pants or igloos to come back into fashion, there is an opportunity to reevaluate the modern outdoor wardrobe and the materials we choose to make it.

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