Campcore Manifesto

Unlike many of the -core designations that have been handed out recently, campcore is not based on a singular look, or an ideal silhouette or color scheme. Campcore is a little harder to pin down, but is also a little easier to stumble upon. The point of reference for campcore is similar to that of normcore in many ways. Campcore is what is worn when you’re camping, and what you use to make camp. You are dressed in what is most functional, and your accessories are made up of the things that keep you safe in nature. There are not five essential campcore items to buy this summer, there really isn’t even one (aside from the Snow Peak hammer). Campcore means really whatever you’d like it to mean, as long as what you want to it mean is clothing you would wear camping.

Campcore describes the aesthetic sensibilities of someone at the camp. One who is camping. Campcore doesn’t mean clothing that makes you look like you’re camping. It also does not mean clothing you wear when you are camping. It doesn’t even have to do much with clothing at all. There is not a campcore “look” because trying to achieve the aesthetic sensibility of one camping has as much to do with everything you surround yourself with and your actions as it does the clothing you wear. This is not a limiting factor for campcore, but a liberating one. Campcore can be just as much 1950s Scout shorts as Patagonia baggies or raw denim. Campcore appears equally in vintage rolltop backpacks as the KS Ultralight KS50. Campcore is reduceable to muddied tones of olive, blaze orange, and indigo as it is specifiable to the exact object of a snowpeak titanium mug or copper-tipped hammer.

Campcore is an aesthetic that is as achievable on a shoestring budget as it is on a trust fund. Campcore is as fully realized in camp mocs you bring in your bag for wearing around the fire as in Salomons you wear because you’re planning on running the trail tomorrow, not just walking it like everyone else. It only matters that you’re willing to get all of your gear covered in mud and grease on a backpacking trip. Campcore represents the clothing and gear designed for an experience — it’s what you wear when you’re soaked to the bone, caught 15 miles out from any shelter on your second day of a hike, but you are still comfortable anyway, reveling in the thrill not of withstanding what nature gives to you, but in existing in that nature, becoming a part of the camp. You are covered in mud and plant matter just like every other piece of the Earth you’re currently on and in.