Inside the Montreal brand protecting the environment from us.

François-Xavier Tétreault and Simon-David Fortin in their Montreal studio

An unsuspecting office building in Montreal plays host to the design studio of Canadian outdoor wear brand Ostrya. Inside, Simon-David Fortin and François-Xavier Tétreault, the two Co-Founders of Ostrya, work on their creations, cutting fabric, filling down jackets, and putting all the pieces together. The two have been working together on Ostrya since February of 2019, but they make it clear that they are friends first, and business partners second. The inside of the workshop is well organized, jackets in different stages of readiness fill shelves, while industrial-sized machines create a maze throughout the space. A day prior, they had received a new piece of machinery, a heat press, now allowing them to bring this part of their operation in-house rather than outsourcing it to another manufacturer. This is all part of the plan that the two have for Ostrya, taking on every aspect of production in order to reduce environmental impacts while creating the best product at the best possible price. Moving into 2021, I wanted to get a sense of where Ostrya was heading and what we could expect to see hitting their website in the coming season.

People may be surprised when they realise that most of what Ostrya makes comes out of this workshop. The jackets are handmade, the t-shirts and cut and sewn in Canada, and almost everything passes through your hands. It's not the easiest way to go about running a brand, why did you choose to operate like this?

Simon-David Fortin: This is the way we do things, so like, doing the sewing ourselves is important for us. We like it to look really professional. We try to really refine our craft so that everything is as good as it gets.

Francois-Xavier Tetreault: Sometimes we're cutting or sewing or filling a jacket and we're like, why are we doing this? It's so much work, we're making these things and we can't even believe it.

SDF: A lot of brands choose to receive their materials already cut, we just decided to buy it like this and do it ourselves. The scale is small, it also allows us to have a lot of flexibility in what we do. When you work with a manufacturer you always have to have a minimum, but for us, if we just want to cut three pairs of pants, we can do it ourselves. Everything we need to make our clothes is here; we love that.

Have people been receptive to this way of working? I'm sure they love the final product and knowing that it was produced this way but is there ever any feedback about the price?

SDF: To some people, our jackets sound expensive, but for us, it's important to keep the price as low as we can. A jacket that we sell for $1200 makes a lot of sense for us. There are so many steps involved, and everything adds up. The fabric, the down, even having the labels made in Canada cost us $2, whereas we could get the same label for $0.02 from overseas.

FXT: Comparing our jacket to a North Face jacket, like, it's not the same thing. The scale of production isn't the same; it's not even about the quality as much as it's about how it's produced and with what materials. A $450 jacket will keep you warm, but it's cheap, it's cheap fabric, cheap labour and the millions of units being produced are destroying our planet. We use remnant fabric, cruelty-free down. It's much about peace of mind and supporting smaller brands.

SDF: You're paying more but you're also encouraging local producers. It's funny because finding suppliers for t-shirts was more difficult than we imagined. We wanted organic cotton, and we wanted it to be made in Canada. It was a massive puzzle, but we worked hard to get the best price and product for our customers. We could have just used blanks and made the shirts $35, but we wanted to use local and organic. The point is that we wanted to be responsible and we took the less harmful route, the t-shirts could have been $100.

FXT: We're not interested in fast fashion or brands that jack up the price just because of the name. We enjoy making really nice things, and we have to work around these restrictions to make them the way we want to.

It's a lot of work, especially for a young company. The number of projects you put out this year, even with everything that's going on, is impressive by any standard. The Summer 20 collection had pants, shorts, t-shirts, and bags. You also had the collaboration with Mile End Miles, sponsoring athletes, rereleasing your signature hard-shell jacket. Did this year live up to the expectations that you had set? How did the pandemic impact Ostrya?

FXT: Well, I think it was pretty intense, mostly because of COVID but I think we are right where we want to be. I'm not sure where we would be without COVID, but honestly, the slowdown helped in many ways. Since we started two years ago, we were always chasing our tail. It's really important to be ahead when designing and producing; it helped us get to the right beat. In terms of collections, we're working on Summer 21 right now, and that's all going into production, we're super busy.

SDF: We're going to start selling to retailers now. Before we were only selling on our own site, so it's a big step, and now we need to start producing ahead of time to get everything ready to ship out, so we're skipping this winter. Being a young company with a small group of employees gives us a lot of freedom, and we decided to pass on this season and focus more on the next. It's nice to see because a few people were like, "Hey, I want to buy a Denali jacket but it's not online". It's also funny when you go on a brand's website and everything is sold out; there's a lot of like Japanese brands where you go to their website and it's just empty, that's really cool to us.

Photography by Alex Onik

You mentioned retailers, could you give any info away? Where will people be able to buy Ostrya?

FXT: We're going to be on SSENSE in March.

SDF: They reached out and it was a really natural process, developing a relationship with them. We're excited.

FXT: Other retailers approached us, but that was last year, and we weren't ready to deliver. We're stoked to work with SSENSE because it's a Montreal company. We don't really fit with some brands that are on there, but we think that's perfect. There's a lot of really fashion-oriented brands, and we're pretty much one of very few real outdoors brands.

SDF: We work really hard to make the brand work. It was never about doing anything just to be on SSENSE. We're always just doing our own thing, but it was very flattering when they asked us. They bought some chalk bags and we're really excited to see what they'll do with them and how the higher-end clientele will react.

FXT: They are from Montreal and they're using their platform to support a smaller Montreal business, it makes us really happy.

Congratulations! I can't wait to see how they style Ostrya with high-end fashion brands, chalk bags as little side bags? I saw you posted a meme about collaborations within the fashion world yesterday, a very topical subject. I'm sure that you have a slightly different view on collaborations as producers rather than consumers, what's your take on all of this?

SDF: It's why you won't see Patagonia do any collaborations with Dime. I love Palace and I love Arc'teryx, but it's a skateboarding brand and an ice climbing brand. We think that the world doesn't need more goodies. When a collaboration brings two companies together and creates a fascinating product, we support it. Sometimes you can see that it's just a way to create sales and that's not something that we can support. It goes against what outdoor companies are supposed to believe and fight for; doing as little damage to our planet as possible. When I saw the North Face x Margiela jacket I had no idea who would ever need that; a regular Nuptse jacket is enough. When you look at it from an environmental aspect it really doesn't make sense.

FXT: I think in many ways it's great that a lot of streetwear brands are collaborating with outdoor brands because it's giving younger kids the opportunity to see into this world and get engaged. However, it's important to think about why companies are collaborating. Is it to create a meaningful product together or to sell more product? When shareholders start making decisions, it moves into a world only focused on profits and more production, that's where the problem is.

SDF: That's our opinion, but if anyone wants to collaborate with us just let us know, we're interested.

We spoke earlier about the cost of the gear you produce. Your jacket isn't priced differently to what most streetwear/outdoor wear collaborations are reselling for on the secondary market. The third-party, GORE-TEX, involved in most if not all of the high-profile products being released this year has now become synonymous with quality. What is Ostrya doing differently?

SDF: Since we're buying remnant fabric that comes from bigger companies that produce too much, we only have access to what's leftover. In the design process, we work around these limitations. Maybe we don't have a certain fabric in black, so we will use whatever is available instead. If we wanted to work with Gore-Tex, we would have to buy it straight from the company which would go against our views. Since we prefer to do something eco-friendly, we get samples from the suppliers and test the waterproofing and breathability ourselves, when we find a fabric that meets our standards we use it. Sometimes people get too caught up with the brand name. If you use a good 3-Ply fabric and sturdy construction you will stay protected in almost any conditions, it doesn't just have to be Gore-Tex.

FXT: Gore-Tex is just a brand but it's what a lot of people think about when they have Arc'teryx in mind. With our Cambium hard-shell, we wanted to show the versatility of both design and fabric, making a jacket perfect for all environments. We don't think that you need one jacket for one activity and another jacket for another activity, we brought it all to one place. We tried to limit anything unnecessary from the design, leaving just the essentials. Our friend snowboards all winter in the jacket and I use it for running; it's great all year round.

SDF: The design is as stripped down as it could be, we aren't interested in making a jacket with the most pockets, we just want it to work well. The hood was designed to fit a helmet and we made it easy to move in. Anything that didn't keep you dry or allow you to perform well was removed.

I get the feeling that everything Ostrya does comes from a place of creating what you want to wear and what you want your friends to wear when they go on adventures. Being from Montreal, you're surrounded by top-tier terrain to test the gear out while also being in the middle of such a culturally rich city. What is Ostrya's relationship with Montreal like? Could this brand have been created if you were from somewhere else, Toronto maybe?

SDF: I feel that there's so much diversity here and that brings a lot of people with a lot of different opinions together. There's a lot of soul. Montreal is very true to itself; it's not trying to be something that it isn't. It's diverse, it's colourful, it's fantastic in a way. I feel like there's such a big mix, it's dirty, but it's clean, it's artistic, but it's also regular. There's like a load of Yin and Yang. We used to spend a lot of time in the mountains and outside. I grew up in a small town and came here for University, so I have this mix of growing up in one environment and now living in another. If we were from Toronto, Ostrya would look a lot different, it has to be true and authentic to who we are, and we wouldn't be the same if we were from anywhere else. We never have to worry about trends here or what anyone else is doing, we just do our work.

Thank you, Simon and Francois!