Peter Jackson wears a North Face puffer while shooting LOTR. Image: Instagram<\/p>\n
Perhaps it should come as no surprise, then, that the first down jacket ever made in this country can be traced back to another celebrated New Zealander. Fresh off Everest in the mid-1950s, Sir Edmund Hillary was preparing for his 1956 expedition to the South Pole when he asked Roland \u2018Roly\u2019 Ellis, founder of local mattress and sleeping bag company Fairydown, to make specialist polar jackets for the trip. \u201cRoly would just have said \u2018oh, we can make those\u2019,\u201d his grandson David Ellis recalls. \u201c\u2018Simple as anything \u2013 just sleeping bags with sleeves\u2019.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Although the construction was slightly more complicated in reality<\/a>, including chevron-stitched duck down filling, ventile windproof cover and hood lined with wolverine fur, those so-called sleeping bags with sleeves made history when they warmed Hillary and his team on their history-making mission to the South Pole<\/a>. \u201cThey were probably the first down jackets that were ever made here,\u201d says Ellis, now the founder of Christchurch-based outdoors brand Earth Sea Sky<\/a>. \u201cSo when they got back, obviously everybody was interested.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n But with these specialist polar jackets \u201cridiculous, just too warm\u201d for the New Zealand climate, Ellis\u2019 grandfather chose a \u201csmall hand-picked group of very good machinists\u201d from Fairydown to start making more wearable down jackets under the label Elco. Ellis, who has his own personal library of 20 archival down-filled jackets including one from the South Pole expedition, says the early Elco jackets were about as durable as they come. \u201cPlenty of those jackets that were made in the 50s and early 60s are still around today, and they\u2019re good as gold apart from the zip.\u201d<\/p>\n Notably, these archival down-filled jackets embraced an array of bright colours. The polar jackets worn by Hillary were \u201cinternational orange\u201d for safety reasons, Elco jackets in the 50s and 60s were a distinctive shade of green and later blue and red, and Fairydown jackets in the 80s and 90s were renowned for their bright, cheerful hues. \u201cBlack was forbidden back then, because we\u2019re talking about people who are out in nature here,\u201d says Ellis. \u201cThese people didn\u2019t want to wear black, because they wanted to stand out a bit from the rocks.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n The silhouettes also weren\u2019t as voluminous as what we are used to today. \u201cI don\u2019t like the puffy look of puffer jackets, because it just looks like a Michelin man,\u201d says Ellis. But in the \u201890s and 2000s, with outdoor titans like Kathmandu and Macpac opening stores and streetwear brands like Huffer arriving on the scene, the puffer jacket range diversified and the level of puff increased. \u201cI don\u2019t know exactly when the preference also turned to black, that was more the streetwear influence,\u201d says Ellis. \u201cBut now we all look like Michelin men going to a funeral.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n But which New Zealand centre is the puffiest and most funereal of all? Brands like Kathmandu and Macpac couldn\u2019t provide any data on where their black puffer sales are strongest, but secondhand resellers and fashionistas alike offered some insights into which jackets are prevailing this winter. Rose at Crushes<\/a> in Auckland says that bomber jackets are dominating in our biggest city \u2013 \u201cdenim, leather or canvas, but never puffed\u201d and my colleague Emma Gleason notes the recent rise of the \u201cversatile and classic\u201d trench coat in the city of sails.\u00a0<\/p>\n Puffers still remain in the top five outwear picks for Aucklanders, adds Gleason. \u201cOurs arrive later than elsewhere in the country\u2026 Very popular with students, mums, young men and anyone going to a sports game or the supermarket.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Perhaps due to its wild weather requiring slightly more resilient materials than duck down, Wellington is also less \u201cpuffer-centric\u201d according to my colleagues in the capital. \u201cI would say the dominant Wellington jacket is a long coat, with puffer jackets and leather jackets in a close tied-second,\u201d says Lyric Waiwiri-Smith. \u201cPuffer jackets are very much a Hutt Valley thing, but in Welly City everyone\u2019s got their coats on.\u201d Reporting from the Saturday morning soccer pitch, Claire Mabey notes \u201ca real mix\u201d of tailored wool coats and puffer jackets on display.\u00a0<\/p>\n As you move further down the country and temperatures plummet, the puff becomes more plentiful. \u201cIt\u2019s been a fixture of our fashion scene since puffer jackets really blew up in the mid 2000s, and I think it\u2019s firmly held its place,\u201d says Rosie from Nifty<\/a> in Christchurch, who still thinks fondly of the black Kathmandu puffer she got for her 14th birthday and wore in every Bebo photo. \u201cI didn\u2019t even realise the puffer was geographically-specific until a friend from Wellington told me that no one wears a puffer jacket there like they do down here.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\nJim Bates, Peter Mulgrew, Ed Hillary, Murray Ellis, and Derek Wright in their down jackets at the South Pole. Image: Ellis Family Archive<\/p>\n
Brightly coloured Elco down jackets as seen on the Tasman Glacier in 1971. Image: Ellis Family Archive<\/p>\n
Perfect for the sidelines at a game or a funeral. Image: AS Colour<\/p>\n
An Elco jacket from the late 1950s. Image: Ellis Family Archive<\/p>\n