Why technical people need different clothing
Most technical clothing is designed for a trail. The people we design for spend their days at desks, workbenches and airport gates, carrying more electronics than a hiker ever would.
BY FIELD // LAB / / 2 MIN READ
Who we mean.
By technical people we mean engineers, researchers, founders and operators. Anyone whose work involves hardware, software or both. A normal day might start on a bike, move to a desk, include two hours standing at a bench and end on a flight to a test site.
The kit comes along for all of it. A laptop and a phone at minimum. Often a second phone, earbuds, a battery, a bundle of cables and a portable SSD. Some people now add smart glasses.
This group already buys technical clothing. Most of it comes from outdoor brands, because those brands make fabric that stretches, dries fast and handles weather. The fabric is often right. The rest of the design still assumes a mountain.
Outdoor gear answers a different question.
A hiking pant puts storage on the thigh because the wearer is standing and walking. A climbing jacket raises its chest pockets so a harness won't block them. A ski shell is cut roomy to fit insulation underneath. Each is a good decision for its activity.
Now sit at a desk in that hiking pant with a phone in the thigh pocket. The phone presses into your leg for eight hours. Wear the alpine shell into a design review and you look like you took a wrong turn at a trailhead. Put a laptop in a pack built around a water reservoir and the laptop sleeve is an afterthought.
None of that makes outdoor clothing bad. It was made for someone else's day.
Designing from the actual day.
When we started FIELD // LAB, we wrote down where technical people spend their hours and what they carry through those places. That list sets our design goals.
The Axis Pant starts from sitting. Its phone pocket is low profile and placed to stay out of the way at a desk. It also has a dedicated AirPods pocket and a channel for a pen or small tool.
The Atlas Overshirt sits between a shirt and a jacket. We're designing it with a foldable phone pocket, hidden device storage and internal cable management, so a charging cable has a route that isn't around your collar.
The Vector Fleece is meant to be worn alone at a desk or under the FIELD Shell when the wind picks up. For that job, breathable side panels matter more than maximum warmth.
Looking normal is part of the spec.
A technical person can go from a client meeting to a machine shop to a coffee shop in one afternoon. Nobody wants to change clothes for each. So we treat appearance as a functional requirement. A garment that performs well but looks like expedition gear in an office has failed at one of its jobs.
That rule drives small choices. Hidden ventilation on the shell instead of visible pit zips. Low profile magnetic closures on the overshirt. Minimal branding. Colors that work in a meeting room.
What we don't know yet.
Everything above is a design goal. These products are concept designs today, and we haven't made fit samples. A pocket that looks right in a render can land in the wrong place on a real body.
Next, we work with technical designers and patternmakers to turn these ideas into patterns. Then we test fit on people who sit, ride and travel the way we've described. We'll write about what changes, including the ideas that don't survive the first sample.