Customize Your Gear With These Brands

As outdoor gear becomes more popular in mainstream fashion, chances are increasingly high you will end up with the same clothing or shoes as someone else you meet on the trail.

Now, a number of outdoor companies are offering fashion-conscious consumers the chance to customize their gear for a more individual look. Nike has been offering its Nike iD service for years, giving customers the chance to design their own colorways, and now Chaco, Eddie Bauer and The North Face implemented similar programs.

Customizing a pair of Chacos Z sandals means choosing eight different elements of the shoe from lots of different combinations. The MyChacos program recently expanded to include Chaco Flips, and you can change the toe post, footbed, outsole and each side of the webbing strap among other options.

On the Eddie Bauer website, you can design your own Microtherm Stormdown Jacket, choosing from 24 different colors for nearly every part of the jacket body. Customization bumps the price to $279 over the standard $199 list price, but you almost certainly won’t bump into anyone else with the same color combination.

If you prefer The North Face, get your hands on a custom Denali Jacket for $229. The classic fleece is available in combinations of 22 different colors for $50 more than the standard jacket. Over at KEEN, you can customize either the Newport H2 or Whisper sandal with more than 65 million possible color combinations, while Timbuk2 offers customization on 12 different bag styles.

While customization might not make much sense if you tend to prefer understated colorways like black and grey, those with more flamboyant taste may like to indulge their creative side with a custom piece.