The shade of inexperienced on the puffy jacket is acquainted and in some way cozy. A little bit bluish, lighter and softer than hunter, however extra nonetheless extra inexperienced than teal. A inexperienced that makes you’re feeling prefer it’s 1987 and also you’re a child once more, sporting your mother’s hand-me-down lengthy underwear and sleeping in a barely smelly canvas tent. The puffy jacket’s beige lining, patch hand pockets with flaps and snap placket clinch the impact. When Amanda Russell lifts it up for nearer examination, you possibly can nearly odor the dew of a vibrant, chilly alpine morning.
That’s precisely the type of vibe Russell, senior supervisor for coloration and print at REI Co-op, hoped to foster when she and her workforce chosen this specific inexperienced because the flagship in a brand new timeless palette—REI Archive Colours— that they’ve developed for REI Co-op merchandise. Poring over a number of many years of inexperienced co-op attire and kit pulled from the Co-op Residing Archive, Russell and artistic administrators Nicole Rock and Ian Eburah stored coming again to this 1978 REI Alpine Jacket.
It was simply “so particular,” Russell says. “This coloration on this jacket—you may look via your loved ones historical past and discover a image of somebody that has one thing related. There’s this emotional connection to paint that I feel is so thrilling, and typically it occurs at a unconscious stage that individuals don’t fairly perceive.”
The inexperienced was additionally utterly its personal. It didn’t seem in current engineered coloration requirements that the designers relied on, so dye would must be specifically formulated to match it. In different phrases, the magic inexperienced could possibly be a signature hue for REI. It was an ideal alternative for the core REI Archive Shade palette, which designers developed to replicate the model’s heritage and identification, in order that they will carry that authenticity into up to date designs and prints lengthy into the longer term.
The Residing Archive: A Supply of Inspiration
Located on the heart of the co-op’s Inventive Hub house in Seattle, the Residing Archive is the undertaking’s basis and inspiration. Its 20 rolling stack cabinets, 20 or so flat recordsdata, and numerous racks and containers home every part from 150-year previous tintypes of REI co-founder Lloyd Anderson’s ancestors, to a parka hand-sewn within the Nineteen Sixties by incapacity justice activist Delia Cano when she labored on the co-op, to former REI CEO Sally Jewell’s ice axe. Most significantly for the colour workforce’s functions, the archive accommodates each catalog revealed for the reason that co-op’s creation in 1938, in addition to a curated collection of attire, sleeping baggage, tents, backpacks and different gear.
Sometimes, selecting a coloration palette begins by surveying traits, Russell explains, with designers dipping into what’s occurring in garments, interiors, even up to date positive artwork, and assembling visible boards of pictures and coloration swatches to assist information the method. For this coloration palette impressed by the archives, the workforce surveyed each color-printed REI catalog since 1967, in search of sparks of pleasure and connection. From that work, the workforce narrowed down 4 coloration themes that appeared constant and basic in out of doors gear throughout the years: crimson, blue, yellow and—after all—inexperienced. “You go to a campsite, and also you’re going to search out all 4 of these colours being worn round that campsite—blended in several methods, with completely different personalities, however they’re there,” Russell says.
However the work wasn’t achieved but. There are dozens of shades of yellow, for instance. So, the group then wanted to tug down a whole bunch of coloration swatches and start a strategy of elimination and elevation, culling these yellows as a result of they had been too pastel, say, and these others as a result of that they had an excessive amount of crimson undertone. The workforce thought of feasibility—whether or not particular hues would reproduce in sure cloth or work with a sure product—in addition to whether or not designers may efficiently use them in prints and with different palette colours chosen for the season.
“It looks like they simply stored going via this respiration movement,” observes co-op historian Will Dunn, who oversees the archive. “They began with, the thought of inexperienced, which is so broad, after which, you type of exhale right down to one thing extra particular, after which understand, ‘Oh, that’s not fairly proper. It truly did want extra yellow.’ And so, it breathes again out into that spectrum. And it simply type of went via that movement many, many instances.”
From Heritage Hues to Signature Shades
As Russell and her workforce coloration “breathed” over the course of about three months, they labored with Dunn to tug alternatives of drugs that they might see and contact and discuss. A few of these naturally spoke to the group, simply because the inexperienced jacket did. Eburah was notably taken with a cotton anorak of deep blue with crimson undertones, and this arresting shade helped encourage REI blue. Historic tents and the accent trim on an enormous down Cyclops Bivy sleeping bag from 1962 that integrated all three major colours helped encourage REI yellow, a shade that recollects a fisherman’s slicker. REI crimson has roots within the sleeping bag’s physique coloration, and is as wealthy and orange-y and vibrant as tomato soup on a chilly day.
Russell relishes discussing the finer factors of the co-op’s new palette. She acquired her begin working with coloration greater than 10 years in the past as a designer at Michael Kors in New York, making ladies’s garments. When she discovered herself escaping town each weekend to hike and path run and camp, she realized she wanted a change, and took a job engaged on coloration design for Patagonia. About eight years in the past, she made the leap to REI in Seattle and labored her option to the highest of the colour workforce.
Bringing the Palette to Life
Russell pulls a ladies’s snow jacket off a rack and holds it as much as exhibit its wild horizontal waves of black stripes atop an on-trend fuchsia, each set off with scorching streaks of REI crimson that add a basic really feel to the placing sample. There’s additionally a child’s fleece in stable crimson, its heat enhanced by a contrasting slash of REI-blue zipper. Then, Russell stretches as much as a excessive bin on a shelf and pulls down a pattern of polar fleece with white, fuchsia and REI crimson splashed throughout an earthy terra cotta coloration in an interesting botanical sample. Subsequent is a swatch of sentimental magenta flannel plaid with REI crimson and a deep brown spice coloration zinging via.
These are only a few examples of how the co-op is that includes REI crimson in fall 2025’s merchandise , Russell explains. It’s a foundational coloration for the brand new REI Co-op Campwell and Trailmade collections and ladies’s snow, and seems in a number of completely different materials and types for males, ladies and youngsters, and in each prints and solids. These colours are about “honoring our personal product and our personal tales,” she says. However “we’re truly utilizing these colours in a extra trendy means, and it’s additionally constructing season over season.” REI blue additionally debuted for fall within the Campwell and Trailmade collections, as an accent and part of material prints, as a result of its distinctive undertones add “a extremely stunning type of surprising pop,” Russell says.
REI yellow, in the meantime, will function prominently subsequent spring, as a stable coloration for tents and backpacks within the Trailmade assortment, in addition to in a cloth that improbably incorporates lime inexperienced, spice and blue right into a print that appears beautiful alongside the yellow gear. And that magnetic REI inexperienced will are available fall of 2026, as a result of it have to be customized died—no current inexperienced was the correct match. It’s going to largely function as a stable coloration in attire within the Campwell and Trailmade collections.
Dunn is thrilled by outcomes of the colour workforce’s effort. “Historical past is collaboration,” he says. “Everybody has an opinion who REI is, however none of us are utterly proper on our personal. It solely begins to make sense whenever you add all of us collectively. The colour palette follows a bit of little bit of that pondering. Wanting on the sum of our previous to grasp who we’re. It’s cool to see that come via in a bodily expression.”
However that coloration palette is just not but full, its personal historical past nonetheless being collaborated, nonetheless coming alive. And the co-op has Russell’s “bathe ideas” to thank.
“I might be house, and it might simply be bothering me: I feel we’re lacking one thing,” she says. A attainable fifth coloration was nagging her. Generally the reply got here to her as typically the very best concepts do, within the bathe. Russell can’t say what it’s but, however in case you take into account that the palette already contains the three major colours and a inexperienced, “what would the apparent coloration be?” she asks. “You would in all probability guess it.”
Are you able to guess the fifth REI Archive Shade?
Depart a remark together with your concepts.
The put up Simply the Proper Tone: REI Archive Shade Brings the Previous into the Current appeared first on Unusual Path – An REI Co-op Publication.