Why less is more...

Once in while, you stumble upon some things, that seemed normal for years and all of a sudden you think "What the heck? There is a world behind my 4 corners of imagination". One of these events happened to during the last month of my work. Normally I was a follower of the dogma "Fabric must be as thick as possible". But now I realised, that this is wrong! So how came this change in beliefs? Well, I´ll tell you.
The first crack in belief I noticed was in 2007, when I met Mr John Carver from Eagle Industries on a exhibition and bought a Combat Field Pack from him. The pack was made "only" from 500D nylon and performed so incredibly, I could not believe it! It survived harshest treatment without any damage. This was the moment where I started to think about the "All made from 1000D nylon" trend.
First thing I asked myself was: "Is everything made from 1000D nylon fibre really high-quality standard?" And I came to the conclusion: "No! Not at all!" There are copy's of the Rhodesian (yeah, I know, Zimbabwe now...) M83 Assault vest, plate carriers from various Chinese vendors, all 1000D but not really sturdy. And most of those issued(!) items in 1000D pay theyr ruggedness with a tremendous weight! So next thing in line was: How did that happen? For example, the British MOD parted from their ´58Pattern webbing for one of the same reason the US Army dumped theyr M1956 for the new M1967/LC1 webbing: Because it was lighter! So why accept the backdrop of heavy gear anyway.
Solution was easy: Because it was made for soldiers! A regular soldier doesn't care for his gear very much. If its broke, he exchanges it, he has not to pay for it! The government has to, though! And that's why they choose the cheapest and easiest way, to get a system, that's affordable and will withstand the heaviest mis-treatment of any bored soldier in service.
So, now its obvious why the military sacrifices weight for stability, but why do commercial producers still work with that old techniques. Answer is threefold:

1. Customers ask for it! Because of the long-lasting indoctrination of "massive is best", customers ask for that stuff!
2. Not every producer do stock this stuff. In fact it is the military industry stuck in its overweight-phase. Civilian outdoor company's, like Hoeffel, Jack Wolfskin, etc. already recognised the value of lightweight, sturdy fibers.
3. Last but not least: Its a lot easier, to make a long lasting 1000D rucksack than a good long lasting 500D rucksack! So I reckon a lot of companies prefere to go the easy way on that... Companies like Eagle Industries proofed that lightweight gear is possible!

Taken these things in consideration, I started to put together a lightweight, all weather outfit based on the principle "as light as possible". I will post my experiences here within the next months, so stay tuned, and remember:

Big may be beautiful, but light is comfortable! And safe!