Hiking Patrol AW24
Guest columnist Millie Throp gives Essential Journal readers an insight into the story behind this Norwegian success story.
Words by Millie Throp
Whilst started on-screen, to say that the newly manifested outdoor label, Hiking Patrol, is at all fleeting in its mission would be to suggest that the reverie of fresh air is superficial. Granted, off-grid forays would not traditionally cross paths with those yielding online followings – these excursions previously armoured by a compass at best – but accept Wai Tsui’s formerly online-only platform as an exception in its pace, ushering an inhale amidst even the technical age.
What started as an echo chamber of meta contacts, founded in 2019 at the hands of the Scandinavian native turned curator, the forum-turned-fashion-house has since given rise to a community of otherwise strangers. Adjoined by a tapestry of 1:1 frames, the page today prides stories captured across continents. Often spurring camping, foraging, climbing, and the general freeing of spirits.
While for some, scaling on foot could be framed evolutionary, Hiking Patrol’s coterie is challenged to escape the tentative labeling that comes with openly championing the outdoors nowadays. But where the “gorp” phenomenon largely removed the remoteness of such ramblings, in place of parading their evidence, Hiking Parol prides its latest apparel venture as an effort to trek beyond this effect.
Hence, for the brand’s inaugural, AW24 collection, titled aptly “Cyclic Nature of Life”, what Tsui started online sees its natural course tread, carrying its on-screen cohort – hand in hand – off the grid.
Proposing a uniform for anyone considered to harness an explorative mindset, the saying “there’s no such thing as bad weather” might come to mind upon stepping into such gear. So, with preparation somehow at the essence of freedom and spontaneous movement, it is sensical to unpick Hiking Patrol’s move into the sartorial, answering the alfresco impulses of its vanguard once more, as it had in uniting them.
An arguable final form for utilitarian regalia, the anticipated offering pans a greater focus on pared-back aesthetics and technicalities this season, performing as seamlessly on the incline as within the urban domain. Easy on the iconography, the release begs to question why what is cherished on a hillside should then not be donned in inner-city pursuits; a badge of belonging worn at its purest.
Expectedly flourishing in the physical, the collection’s aubergine quilting and detachable khaki outerwear represents a reclamation of primal enjoyment for a new generation. And elsewhere, the brand’s extensive network – harnessed by the universality of its cause – even offers an on-foot collaboration with Italy’s prolific Diemme, unveiling the calf leather Movida silhouette as a central, grounding stomper.
Toasting to five years of shared community, whether remote or together in the rugged, Hiking Patrol’s AW24 collection marks a march of its following in tandem. As an outfitter started by the community; for the community, the primal instinct to zip up and head out is manifestly one that reaches us all.
