Why Is No One Buying Old Orvis?

It’s always “Polo Country” this and “Armani Collezione” that, but no one seems to be looking at one of the most underrated 2nd hand brands of them all - Orvis. Founded in Manchester, Vermont in 1856, Orvis began as a bait and tackle shop serving the sportsmen of Bennington County. While they wouldn’t branch into clothing until the 1940s, they were the first business to launch a mail-order catalogue, beating Sears Roebuck to the punch by nearly 20 years.

They’ve always been a fly-fishing business, with a large part of their market focused on hardware. Unlike some of their contemporaries from 100+ years ago like L.L. Bean and Abercrombie & Fitch, Orvis has remained a sport-focused business with very few attempts to stray away from their target customer. In my opinion, this is one of the key characteristics that makes Orvis one of the most underrated brands on the second hand market.

Given their utility-focused nature and penchant for pockets, zips, buttons, fun details, and hearty fabrics, some of their older pieces could easily be mistaken for A. Presse, Kaptain Sunshine, Engineered Garments, South2West8, and so on.

Don’t believe me?

Here are a few side-by-side examples of high-end menswear pieces next to some vintage Orvis I found surfing on eBay. and this just scratches the surface.

I spent the past few days periodically scraping eBay for some of the best Orvis pieces that look like they could’ve been bought from your favourite menswear boutique. Below you’ll find access to all of those items in a custom store-front I made on eBay, let me know if you like it better/worse than my old format of manually adding links/images. Paid subscribers will find a few more pictures of some of my favourite items off the list, and a link to all the items pictured and much more.

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