Over the last five years, Dylan Lynch’s enthusiasm for Kluane Mountaineering hasn’t waned.
He doesn’t explicitly say this, but his passion for the custom-made down gear brand is apparent from the moment you meet him.
“When I came in to buy my first piece 13 years ago, I said, ‘I’m going to make friends with (then-owner Betty Squires) and, one day, I’m going to run that place,’” Lynch says.
It wasn’t just the allure of the puffy down parkas — handmade in the small Whyte Avenue basement shop for the last 53 years — it was the space itself, the ethos of the brand and the size of the operation that appealed to him.
True to his word, in his early 30s, Lynch went back to school at the University of Alberta to earn a degree in clothing and textiles, then started an apprenticeship at Kluane.
“I had literally zero experience in fashion and garment construction, any of that,” he says. “I just felt like this would happen and decided to aim my life towards it.”
A year-and-a-half into his time at the company, Squires offered to sell him the shop. He took her up on it and quickly made a few changes: launching a very low-key Instagram account, hiring a few more employees and highlighting the brand in other cities.
But he’s adamant Kluane will retain its handmade, grassroots, slow fashion approach as long as he’s at the helm. Locals can pop down to the shop and buy an off-the-rack coat, but more commonly, customers call or email to help choose the details of their custom-made parka. (They also make sleeping bags and snow pants.)
“I love being down here with the people we have here,” he says. “I think that is what people like about us: the fact that you can see stuff happening, and it’s not all robots and automated. It’s just handmade and charming.”
The space is decidedly unassuming. Racks of colourful puffy parkas flank one side of the room, while a cutout window offers a peek at employees sewing jackets. Vintage images of Kluane-clad mountaineers atop peaks surround a large, worn green couch. Rolls of fabric — ready for customers to sort through and choose — are also on display.
“I don’t want to sell 30,000 jackets a year and be in 500 stores because it’s also not as special that way,” Lynch says.
But he still wants the company to succeed. He’s expanded the brand from solely hearty outdoor gear — former customers have brought them 50-year-old jackets still in very wearable shape — into the fashion realm.
In January, Lynch travelled to Paris for Men’s Fashion Week where he set up a showroom and sold to buyers from Korea, Germany, England, the U.S., Japan and Switerzland. After that, he jetted to New York where he hosted a trunk show at Drake’s, a men’s clothing store in SoHo.
“That went incredibly well,” he says. “People were really excited.”
One goal for the future: to maintain the company’s quality with a quicker turnaround. Currently, if you order a bespoke parka, your wait time could be up to a few months.
“In the last two years, we’ve had only one person cancel their order because it took longer than we said, so that’s pretty good,” Lynch says. “We’ve had zero returns. As our capacity gets better, it’s my first priority to make sure that people don’t have to wait as long anymore.”
