Columbia goes Soft? What's Soft Outdoor & How They Did a Sterling Job

Published by UI team Sep 19, 2025 // Last updated: September 19, 2025

Soft Outdoor isn’t an official fashion trend, but it’s a pretty good way to describe what’s been happening in menswear lately. Think of it as a mix between full-tech, outdoor gear and softer, heritage-inspired cuts, fabrics, and colors. It feels like the next step on from gorpcore, less about technical, high-performance looks and more about a more laid-back direction that’s still practical and works, but is way more comfortable.

To be completely honest, I think it’s something we’ve been doing since day one anyway. When I opened the store 23 years ago it was streetwear-focused; it’s where my interests lay and, as it turned out, where the market went pretty soon after. I always had an eye for the more technical pieces when these brands included them and when Nike brought back ACG, that was like Christmas for me.

Jump to 2017-2018. I’m getting older, streetwear as we knew it was dead, and I wanted to get into something I really liked, wanted to wear, and wanted to buy for the store. I’d noticed via magazines like GO OUT and OUTSTANDING that in Japan a lot of outdoor brands were creating these technical, yet easy-on-the-lifestyle looks. The North Face Purple Label is an easy one that comes to mind.

We started to hunt out and add these classic outdoor brands to the store's roster. Columbia itself was an early addition, and when the rep first came to see us, I remember helping him work through his own catalogs for which bits of the very extensive ‘hard’ outdoor range would be right for a UK-based store with a slant toward the lifestyle side of things. We even helped in seasons after that to pick colours for the new ranges they were starting to build for this direction.

Moving it along, what started for me as buying product I really liked and thought was just generally cool yet practical became ‘Gorpcore.’ Not the greatest name ever invented but there you go; some brighter spark than me came up with it and it’s stuck. Cut forward another 3-4 years and I think it’s all settling down into a nice mix of practical, outdoor-ready pieces with real technical qualities, but with an easygoing, clean cut to them.

Also, you can see the direction of travel with the ‘running trend’ that's emerged with brands like Satisfy, Bandit, Acid Running, and now with brands like Portal bringing in cycling/gravel to the mix. Outdoor has diffused into, well... Outdoor. As it should be. Lots of our customers, myself included, do a number of these outdoor activities. I hike, I ride a mountain bike... I’m not running anywhere, however; I’ll leave that to Becky and Matt. It still doesn’t mean I can’t wear some Hokas or the Satisfy Rocker. Even though I doubt I’ll ever even run for a bus, it doesn’t mean to say they don’t look great and are really comfortable for everyday use. They cross over. Hey Presto! ‘Soft Outdoors.’ Products that look on the money but also do what they’re intended to do and will work as per design and build.

Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, Columbia specifically.

Becky is the buyer here at Urban Industry and has been for 12 years now. Between us, we select the items we hope you will like enough to purchase from us. Both of us really liked the way the Columbia selection was going for AW25 and, to highlight a few bits, Becky has come out from behind the excel spreadsheets and selected some of her personal favorites (I selected mine last week in case you missed it and Matt’s will go live today on our socials).