I bought a gore-tex jacket from Patagonia online. It came in. I tried it. I shuddered. I wrote an email to Patagonia customer service. With pictures. Here it comes:
Dear all,
Recently I bought a Patagonia gore-tex jacket on the internet (M’s rain shadow 84470 LMA M). Over the years, I’ve worn a lot of Patagonia clothing and I’ve been quite happy. So, I didn’t expect any problems. The package came in, I tore the plastic apart impatiently, happily pulled the jacket out and inspected it. The jacket was quite good. The material was fine, pockets were nice, all the zippers were there, etc… Then I put the jacket on. And, I was in for quite a surprise. The jacket could comfortably clothe approximately 1.5 of me.
Hmm, I thought, maybe I got a wrong size. I looked at the jacket label and it said in plain English Men’s M. As in medium.
Hmm, I said again, maybe I am not a medium size person anymore. Maybe, I suddenly lost lots of weight and shrank. I measured my weight and height – 160 pounds and 5’10”.
Hmm, I thought, maybe I stayed the same but Americans suddenly grew in size. I checked Wikipedia. It told me that the average American adult male is 5’9 1/2″ and 190 pounds. Well, apparently I weigh less than an average American male, I probably don’t eat enough. Still, in the past I’ve always bought medium size clothing from all outdoors companies and they fit me fine.
So, maybe Patagonia changed their target market to fit this avid mountaineer?
I looked at Patagonia’s website. There were lots of videos with folks skiing, riding, biking, climbing, fishing and… wearing Patagonia clothing. Surprisingly enough, none of them looked like the happy guy on the picture above. In fact they all looked more like underfed shrimps, like me. Ok, the fishermen were a bit more stout, but even they would drown in this jacket.
The jacket would also look quite good on a 9 month pregnant woman, particularly if due to a strange mutation, her belly started at her chest level as shown on the pictures below:
Did I accidentally buy a jacket from Patagonia maternity section. I looked at the label – it said Men’s medium. Men don’t get pregnant, do they?
Oh, I finally realized it! This is a combination jacket designed to wear over a daypack on a rainy day.
It is such a brilliant invention. Now, I don’t have to carry an extra backpack rain cover… In fact, the jacket could probably get a bit bigger to fit over a 100 liter full size backpack.
So, here comes my question – who was this jacket made for?
Regards,
Boris Itin.
Boiled Beets 
did you revived reply from Patagonia? i long time moved to small, medium is only for European or Asian market.
Naturally, they sent me a refund. The problem with Patagonia is that they keep changing sizes. Sometime ago, they started offering slim fit (i.e. not heavily pregnant) for some of their jackets.