Kavu Clothing & Bags

About Kavu clothing

Barry Barr was captaining a salmon boat in the Bering Sea in his early twenties when he got fed up with losing caps to the wind. He cut the webbing off a pair of sandals, rigged it to a ball cap with fishing line, and had the Strapcap. He started selling them out of his car in 1993, and thirty-odd years later the company is still in Seattle and still run by him, which is rare in outdoor clothing.

The name comes from aviation. Klear Above Visibility Unlimited describes a day with no cloud and a view to the horizon, and it explains the general disposition of the clothing — bright prints, unserious graphics, and a range built more for the pub after the walk than the walk itself. Barr's own description of it is après leisure.

Kavu T-shirts, shirts and sweatshirts

The graphics are the point. Pass The Time, Geocentric, Spellout and Klear Above all carry front or chest prints rather than a discreet logo, and the Topspot short sleeve shirt is an all-over pattern rather than a plain colour. If you want outdoor clothing that doesn't announce itself, this is the wrong brand — the whole idea is that it does.

Kavu bags and waist packs

Bags are half the business and the reason a lot of people know the name. The Tote It All is the straightforward one, a squared-off carrier with an external pocket, and the Brimley is the smaller structured version. The Polar Spectator waist pack is the one worn across the chest as much as the waist, which is how Kavu bags tend to get used. All of them use the same heavy webbing and hardware the brand started with on the Strapcap.

Browse all bags at Yards Store, or see what we have in our Manchester and Sheffield shops.