The invention of the down jacket is credited to American adventurer Eddie Bauer. Bauer, who narrowly escaped death from hypothermia on a boat trip, invented a jacket in the 1930s that he lined with goose down in closed compartments, so that the feathers stayed neatly in place. For pilots, such a feather-light yet warm jacket was also called upon, so the US Air Force immediately placed an order with Bauer. That jacket, with the model name ‘Eddie Bauer 1936 Skyliner’, is still in production.
I myself saw a jacket like this for the first time in high school with a group of girls called the Mosquitoes (long story). They belonged to hockey and havo, which in the eighties was the domain of what we then called the quilted jacket. There was a similar trend in Flanders. There they wore jackets from the Millet brand. Paul Jambers once made a short report about this Millet generation.
But the true down divas were in Milan, at a sandwich shop called Al Panino, which is why these boys and girls were called Paninari. The Paninari gathered around an ideology of consumerism, in response to the egalitarian 1970s. They express this with American and Italian brands such as Rifle (ribbon trousers), Timberland (shoes), El Charro (belts), Best Company (sweaters), Armani Jeans (with rolled-up legs), Invicta (backpacks) and above all: down jackets from Moncler. The subculture sensitive Pet Shop Boys even dedicated a song to it, paninaro, with a video clip shot in Milan.
Until then, those jackets were only worn in ski areas (the Moncler brand takes its name from the Alpine village of Monestier-de-Clermont). The practical jacket thus moved from the slopes to the square and took on an aesthetic role. Such a jacket from Moncler also served as a business card for wealth, because they are quite expensive (see the brand on the chest at the top right). In fact, it was during those years that the brand culture emerged, which is now rearing its head again.
In the 1990s, the down jacket was embraced by New York hip-hoppers, and now it is appearing on the catwalk in an XL version. This is the jacket as a sleeping bag. At the Beijing Winter Olympics, Canadian athletes wore such a comprehensive puffer coat, which has become the term for the down jacket. It fits the trend of translating original camping clothes into fashion, but there is also an escapist element to it; the coat as a shelter. And now I suddenly think: did that perhaps also apply to the Mosquitoes at Macropedius College?
