In ‘The Shitthroprocene,’ Patagonia Wants Consumers to Cut the Crap
It’s roughly 10 minutes into the sweeping yet laser-focused “evolutionary history” of consumption when the thought hits you: Is Patagonia’s new film really a form of stealth marketing?
There are at least two fake ads in the 45-minute satirical frolic through the craggy cave dwellings of our Neanderthal forebears, past the flamboyant court of Louis XIV, to a package-strewn modern-day distribution center, but these are largely in jest—a tongue-in-cheek nod to the way advertising manipulates people’s dissatisfaction with their lives to drive the purchase of goods that are “designed to last as long as a hamster in a kindergarten class,” as the northern English-accented narrator quips.
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But spliced into the story of “The Shitthroprocene,” a humorously named albeit fictional geological epoch that derives its name from the very real Anthropocene, or human age, is the mini-saga of how Patagonia fixed the problem of its leaky fishing waders through the use of—spoiler alert—double seams.
The denouement is exactly as cathartic as it sounds, but its purpose is to show how very seriously the outdoor-wear maker takes the quality and durability of its products. The same company that upended the idea of Black Friday in 2011 with a “Don’t Buy This Jacket” spread in the New York Times wants viewers to know that it isn’t, in the words of product impact and innovation vice president Matt Dwyer, “in the business of slinging cheap stuff.”
Commentators on YouTube, where the David Garrett Byars-directed doc can be found, were more cynical. “Bruh, I really just watched a 50-minute advert for a clothing brand talking about the evils of consumerism and advertising. I have no words,” one opined. “That was [the] longest waders ad I’ve ever seen,” another said. “Is it possible the irony of this video went unnoticed by the company that made it?” went a third.
Tyler LaMotte, Patagonia’s director of product and and marketing for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, pushed back on the idea, however. He said that despite on-camera interviews with employees, the film is designed to be educational rather than self-promotional.
“Driving the narrative around responsibility [is] a priority for us and we believe brands are making far too much stuff and people are consuming far too many things made of a lesser quality,” he told Sourcing Journal. “And Patagonia’s philosophy has always been rooted in quality.”
But the Worn Wear purveyor is self-aware enough to realize the cognitive dissonance of trying to save the planet by pumping out goods that strain resources, even if its profits are being funneled into environmental causes instead of shareholder pockets. This is addressed in the flick, if fleetingly.
“There’s a sunk cost to the planet for every product that we make,” Dwyer says in the film. “Our job is to live in the tension of trying to save the home planet by virtue of making and selling stuff.” This includes “doing fewer things better” and “sending fewer products out in the world,” he adds.
The film also bounces from the issue of forced labor cotton in China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region to the very pertinent dangers of greenwashing. Unmentioned, however, is the fact that Patagonia, like the fast fashion it excoriates, still relies on petrochemical-derived materials that shed microplastics—the same ones that have inundated waterways and infiltrated human bodies. With few alternatives available, creating reasonably priced clothing that performs has made synthetics a necessary evil for many outerwear brands. Therein lies another one of Patagonia’s tensions.
At the same time, the twin problems of overproduction and overconsumption, which the fashion industry has been loathe to address, have become increasingly difficult to ignore. The trillion-dollar question is whether brands can decouple profits from the production of new clothing and footwear in an era of one-click commerce and quick-change trends. While this may seem like a simple task—just make less stuff—few companies are keen to tackle it directly. A new circularity-focused initiative that the Ellen MacArthur Foundation announced in May alongside the likes of H&M Group, Primark and Reformation is the first of its kind to examine this head-on, though Patagonia isn’t among the initial tranche of participants.
LaMotte declined to reveal how much product Patagonia puts into the world. He also said that the company’s output is “stable,” meaning there are no plans to actively decrease the number of SKUs it churns out.
“We definitely look at that question of what is responsible growth?” he said. “We’re always reviewing the size of our lines, the products that we assort. The intention is to make products that solve a problem. By no means do we chase a trend or try to drive some fashion moment.”
And the central conceit of “The Shitthroprocene” is that consumers need to ask themselves why they buy what they buy. Brain circuitry is part of it. The same bits of the prefrontal cortex that lit up when our ancestors successfully hunted or gathered respond to FOMO, a.k.a., the fear of missing out, and the false notion of scarcity that limited-time offers inspire.
But the film doesn’t suggest any solutions other than buying things that last longer. Nor does it pin the blame on the industry for opening the floodgates of cheap products in the first place. Patagonia, as Dwyer says, doesn’t have it all figured out. Neither, it seems, does the sector at large.
“We’ve been leading in this space in a lot of ways in terms of responsible production and engineering quality,” LaMotte said. “People often say, ‘Well, why don’t you call the fashion industry out?’ And we’re more like, how do we call them in? How do we invite them into a conversation where we can work together to solve some of these systemic problems and also instill a narrative around quality and designing for intent?”
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