Patagonia

Patagonia is an outdoor clothing company based in Ventura, California. It is best known for its environmental and social consciousness, which manifests itself from its marketing to its business practices to its support of environmental charities.

Patagonia was founded in 1972 by southern California rock climber Yvon Chouinard (b. 1938). The environmentally conscious son of a French-Canadian blacksmith—he joined the Sierra Club as a young man and founded the Southern California Falconry Club—he first became interested in rock climbing through falconry. It was a necessary skill to investigate falcon aeries in craggy peaks in places like Yosemite Valley. After a while, he decided to make his own climbing tools, using the blacksmithing skills he had learned from his father and a secondhand coal-fired forge. Chouinard was ...