I eschewed the North Face fleece at the height of its ubiquity. They were all over my college’s icy New England campus, and I associated them with sorority girls and “basic bitches” (though we didn’t have the term “basic bitch” back then). So I avoided them and thought I was really cool, even though I was actually just cold.
Then the North Face faded from popularity. People started wearing Patagonia, then just wearing sweaters, then sweatshirts. The only people wearing them were visiting tourists and our parents, who aren’t going to stop wearing something warm and fuzzy just because their pretentious kids tell them it’s no longer stylish. But now North Face has rolled out a new custom option that could actually make their fleeces relevant again.
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