Collection: Gramicci

Yosemite, the 1970s. A crew of young climbers the world will come to know as the Stonemasters is rewriting the rules: climbing fast, clean, free, with inspiration drawn from Bruce Lee and Hendrix rather than mountaineering manuals. But the clothing can’t keep up. Jeans and army-surplus camo trousers tear on the granite and, crucially, won’t let the leg go where the climber needs it. Mike Graham, one of the Stonemasters with a feel for design, decides to fix it himself. In a garage in Oxnard, California, where until then he has been making foldable wall-sleeping platforms, he takes a diamond-shaped gusset borrowed from kung-fu trousers — inspired, legend has it, by the fluidity of Bruce Lee’s movements — and sews it into the crotch. The result: a full 180-degree leg splay with no seam in the way. He adds tough canvas from the workwear world so the whole thing lasts, and integrates a nylon webbing belt modelled on rucksack straps into the waist. It tightens with one hand, because the other is holding the rock. In 1982, after years of sewing for friends, he founds the brand and names it after a made-up Italian nickname he once gave himself: Gramicci. The gusseted crotch that Graham effectively introduced to active clothing has since become the standard for the entire category. And trousers born for hanging on a wall now walk the streets from Tokyo to Prague without losing a single functional detail. Function that asserted itself as style. Because style was never the point.