Vintage Eddie Bauer Salmon & Turquoise Polo Shirt 80s

The label still says Outdoor Outfitter, Seattle, U.S.A. The shirt is salmon pink with an all-over turquoise foulard print and a navy contrast collar.

Eddie Bauer nearly died in 1935. He was on a winter fishing trip, soaked through and icing over, and started getting drowsy — the onset of hypothermia. Driving home he began working out a jacket that would be warm without being bulky, and he remembered stories from an uncle who’d fought in the Russo-Japanese War about soldiers wrapped in down-stuffed coats. The result was the Skyliner: the first down jacket patented in America, diamond-quilted, and for the next two decades Bauer held the only patent, making his company the sole domestic manufacturer of quilted down. He outfitted the American Himalayan expeditions through the 50s and 60s.

Then the company dropped the Expedition Outfitter tagline and went after everyday retail. The archivist at Eddie Bauer’s own headquarters calls what followed “mall clothing.”

This is that shirt — the Skyliner’s company, decades later, selling a patterned polo.