Hiking style sheds its granola image with fashion-forward outdoor gear

Hiking gear has stopped looking like a compromise. In Sabrina Bloedorn’s hands, the trail wardrobe feels styled, not merely assembled, with wide-leg hiking pants, dramatic jackets, occasional skirts and exaggerated eyewear replacing the old granola shorthand with something far more deliberate.

The new trail uniform

Bloedorn is the kind of creator who makes the crossover feel inevitable. Her hiking looks are built for movement, but they carry the edited confidence of a fashion week front row, pulled toward sci-fi films and a little bit of fantasy without losing sight of the practical demands of the trail. Most of the pieces she wears are sourced through Instagram, which tells you as much about how this market now functions as it does about the clothes themselves: discovery is social, styling is visual, and the pipeline from niche technical brand to everyday wardrobe is shorter than ever.

That shift matters because hiking style is no longer being framed as an outlier aesthetic. Bloedorn’s TikTok bio describes her work as travel, outfits and outdoors, with Vancouver listed as her location, which places her squarely inside a creator economy where fashion, movement and destination dressing blur together. In other words, this is not a novelty look for a single summit photo. It is becoming a legitimate category of dress.

Why hiking gear looks different now

The older version of outdoor style was easy to mock because it leaned on utility alone. Today’s version keeps the function, but it edits the silhouette. Wide-leg hiking pants soften the utilitarian reference point, while technical jackets get a bit of swing and drama; even a skirt can enter the mix when it is balanced with the right trail shoe and the right attitude.

This is where the cultural context becomes impossible to ignore. Outside Online has long described gorpcore as the fashion trend that brings outdoor gear into mainstream style, but the current moment feels less like a costume wave and more like a wardrobe expansion. The clothes still need to perform, yet they now have to do something else too: look polished enough to wear beyond the trailhead, the airport or the weekend hike.

The broader market was already moving in this direction. In 2020, WWD reported that 20 percent of consumers were spending more time outdoors since the onset of COVID-19, based on a CGPR survey, and that change helped push performance apparel into a more style-conscious lane. Once people began living in their outdoor clothes more often, the demand changed from pure endurance to something more versatile, more flattering and infinitely more visible.

The pieces driving the crossover

The most convincing hiking clothes right now are the ones that read as considered even before you know the fabric spec. Wide-leg hiking pants are the clearest example, because they shift the proportion of the look away from the body-skimming technical uniform of the past and toward something with movement and drape. Add a dramatic shell or a structured jacket and the outfit starts to feel like city wear that can handle mud, wind and a long descent.

Footwear is doing just as much work. Trail shoes are no longer merely about grip and tread, they are part of the styling equation, especially when paired with voluminous pants or a skirt that needs a grounded counterpoint. The result is a look that feels more wearable in daily life, because each piece has to succeed both as equipment and as clothing.

Bloedorn’s own framing sharpens that idea further. She has said she was inspired by sci-fi films and wanted to bring that energy onto the trail, which explains why the styling reads slightly futuristic rather than purely rustic. She also said that “the best place for outdoor style is Asia,” a reminder that some of the most interesting technical brands are now being found outside the old Western outdoor canon.

The brands that proved this was not a fluke

The commercial side of the story has been building for years. WWD reported that Merrell’s U.S. debut of its 1TRL line was slated for March 2020, with prices ranging from $40 to $160, a useful marker for how style-led outdoor gear can still sit in a relatively accessible bracket. That price range also helps explain why the category has spread so quickly: it offers the visual payoff of fashion with a functional backbone that does not demand luxury-level spending.

The category’s momentum was visible even before that. WWD also noted that a Merrell x Outdoor Voices collaboration sold out, an early sign that consumers were ready for outdoor brands to act more like fashion labels, provided the product still held up in real use. Christopher Hufnagel, Merrell’s president, has spoken to the pandemic-era boost in outdoor style, and that timing matters. As people spent more time outside, the category stopped being an occasional performance layer and became part of the weekly rotation.

How the look still works on the trail

For all the style talk, the best versions of this trend still follow the same basic rules REI gives hikers: think in layers, choose moisture-wicking fabrics and carry extra protection because conditions can change quickly. That is the quiet genius of the current fashion-forward outdoor look. It lets you play with proportion, color and silhouette without abandoning the mechanics that make the clothes useful in the first place.

So the modern hiking wardrobe is not really abandoning function, it is refining it. The pants are wider, the jackets are sharper, the eyewear is bolder, and the trail shoe now has to hold its own next to a real outfit. That is why hiking style no longer feels like a niche joke or a borrowed aesthetic. It has become one of the most convincing examples of how performance gear can cross over into everyday dressing without losing its point.