The Patagonia Archives are tucked away behind a generic storefront somewhere in Ventura, California. Until you walk through the doors and glimpse a slice of warehouse, you don’t realize you’re in proximity of a semi-secret stash of some of the coolest, rarest gear in the world. The 10,000 square-foot space is filled with vintage Patagonia products—thousands of them—as well as countless photographs, catalogues, letters, and other ephemera from the brand’s 43-year-old history. And the newly-accumulated collection has come together at the right time. Fashion is going through a major heritage obsession as people gravitate toward brands with history and authenticity—for some people, wearing the right vintage Patagonia fleece is just as cool as wearing the latest piece off the Gucci runway.

The famous Tin Shed, where Yvon Chouinard started the company that would become Patagonia. It’s still a working blacksmithery on Patagonia’s Ventura campus. Inside Patagonia’s secret 10,000 square-foot Archives.

But it’s not just the heritage factor. Fashion is obsessed with Patagonia itself—the new garms and the company’s ethos of social and environmental activism. As the industry starts to seriously grapple with the environmental and human implications of clothing production, Patagonia’s story resonates more than ever among fashion insiders and un-crunchy urbanites. Designer Brendon Babenzien of Noah closed his store last Black Friday, pointing people instead toward Patagonia’s radical “100% For The Planet” sale (where all their sales—all $10 million—went to grassroots environmental nonprofits). Folks are wearing their support on their sleeves too: White-hot designer Virgil Abloh proudly sports Patagonia logo T-shirts, and this summer NYC was practically overrun by the company’s iconic 5" Baggies shorts. Turns out sticking to you guns rather than chasing the trend du jour pays off.

At the heart of the Patagonia narrative is its nearly mythic founder Yvon Chouinard, a 78-year-old ascetic sportsman who started a backyard blacksmithing operation in the late-1950s in order to support his climbing and surfing expeditions. Patagonia grew out of this climbing hardware business, and has become a billion-dollar company all while preaching radical corporate responsibility, holding itself to the highest environmental standards in the industry, and wading into various political battles along the way. The paradox of Patagonia is that Chouinard built a booming business on a message of anti-consumption. (Remember Patagonia’s “Don’t Buy This Jacket” New York Times ad?)

In the pre-computer days, design renderings were done by hand. Rugby shirts from the 1970s.

The history of Chouinard’s nonconformism is housed in the Patagonia Archives, launched by longtime employees Val Franco and Terri Laine in 2015. They have decades of institutional knowledge between them—Franco actually lived the history of Patagonia since the beginning, joining its precursor, Chouinard Equipment, in 1973 to sew the soft goods that would be spun off as Patagonia. Since there had been no prior effort to systematically organize and archive Patagonia’s history, Franco and Laine put the call out to past and present employees and friends of the brand to send their well-worn gear “home.” It’s all about “connecting with people and honoring what they did for us in the past,” says Franco. “Then things just arrive.” They’ve now accumulated two shipping containers and countless boxes filled with garments and gear from 1943-the present, from Chouinard Equipment ice picks and glacier glasses to the short-lived “Reef Walker” water shoes from the mid-’80s to climbing gear that’s been up and down El Capitan.

Franco has also been preserving institutional knowledge through oral histories from the early characters that helped define Patagonia, which is used to onboard new employees and steep them in the unorthodox company culture. Besides employees, few have seen the Archives, and there are no plans to open it for public appointments—though Franco and Laine hope to draw on their resources to open a museum space in the Ventura retail store. “I see it as an archive and resource to the employees and innovators of the company, and to collect and protect the history,” says Franco. “Big inspiration goes to the designers of the company.” To learn more about how Patagonia’s design team translates the vintage vibe into modern product, and how their futurist founder feels about all the nostalgia floating around, I sat down with senior designer John Rapp, marketing manager of fish and Workwear Chris Gaggia, and director of Workwear Ed Auman to talk about Patagonia’s latest launch.