Colorfying the Outdoors with Wade Holland

Wade Holland is using a cornucopia of colors and a bit of pizazz to make the outdoors more inclusive for everyone.

We all know the vibe of an outdoor catalog — the distressed grays, fatigued greens, and the million shades of beige. Wash, rinse, repeat.

Despite his love of outdoor adventures, Wade Holland doesn’t subscribe to the drab outdoorsy uniform. He’s the one in the ridiculously patterned button-down, mismatched neon shorts, and bright socks paired with colorful sneakers suited more for an artsy store in Tokyo than a hike in a national forest.

Or at least that’s the sort of outfit I remember he was wearing when I met him just a few weeks ago at a media event in Hollywood, hosted by the state of Florida. It would have been easy to assume he was a part of the Florida schtick — a relaxed and fun Jimmy Buffet-type character living out the dream in the Keys and brought along to make the press want to follow him home and write about him.

In reality, he was a local content creator who had just moved into my neighborhood. His rad outfit made me curious — who is this guy? And, what sort of amazing thrift shop had he invaded for such tip-top 90s-era clothing? Naturally, I asked him out for coffee to talk about it.

Holland Makes 1986 Jealous

It turns out that his actual schtick is “Colorfying the outdoors,” a tagline noted on his Instagram bio. Let’s just say that his playful and zany style would make the year 1986 jealous.

“For me, style has always been a way to express myself in coming into the outdoors, to showcase how I want to show up in this space,” he told me. “I want to wear insanely bright, crazy clothing when I recreate in nature to make the outdoors less like a [country] club with a prescribed uniform.”

Where the outdoor industry stands today — leading an outsider to believe that outdoor recreation is only for a specific type of person — is not where Holland saw it begin as a freeskier in the ‘90s. The creativity, self-expression, and rogue individuality of the freestyle skiing world is where he got his life ethos of living out loud.

From Montana to Los Angeles

Holland spent six years on the competitive freestyle ski circuit, and his sister was the North American freeskiing champion in 2004. As a young man, he watched Montana’s homegrown freeskiing icons — Mickey Price, Tony Gilpin, and Tanner Hall — defy the rules and change the game because they shredded the mountain on their own terms.

“The people that I was watching on the hill were these hot dogging, old school skiers,” Holland says, noting that ‘hot dogger’ denotes a level of effortless flashiness with off-the-charts charisma and zest. “My style goes back to seeing these people express themselves creatively on the mountain and develop their own style.”

I grew up skiing on the mountains of New Mexico and southern Colorado in that same era, showcased in ‘80s and ‘90s Warren Miller films and the 1983 comedy classic, Hot Dog…the Movie. I wasn’t quite as wild as what you’ll see in those old films, but I did show up in a noxious pink ski bib and a bright blue and neon-yellow-patterned jacket for extra flair. Did it give me power? Yeah, it did.

Holland has tested the theory that a little apparel pizazz can power confidence, boldness, and courage. At September’s See Change Sessions conference in Vermont, he put out a rack of bright and audacious clothing for people to try on. He sold confidence, zest, and a little thrill — but not the clothes themselves. “Most people are like, oh I could never wear that. That’s just too crazy,” Holland says. “But once they put it on, people start laughing, people start smiling. One guy said, ‘It’s like my shield. I feel like I can accomplish anything.'”

Can this help make some people feel less intimidated in a space that has been dominated by a certain look or demographic? That’s the goal. “My whole thing is to get people to start forming more relationships with the outdoors,” Holland says. “If the end goal with all of this is to get people to want to care for and protect it and save it for the future, you gotta get people outside.”

His move to Los Angeles in 2019 opened his eyes to the accessibility of nature in a place more known for sprawl than wild spaces. Although much of its populace (and definitely a majority of visitors) may not know it, Los Angeles is a gem of outdoor adventure. Smack dab in the middle of the city, Griffith Park is one of the nation’s largest municipal parks with seemingly unending urban wilderness and five times the size of Central Park in New York City. Holland and his partner recently moved to the foothills of Altadena, just minutes from the Gabrielino Trail, the nation’s first National Recreation Trail (NRT) established in 1970 to represent a diverse community and its region.

“There are so many people in this city that have no idea that this is a free resource for them to use,” Holland says. “And it’s right in their backyard.”

“Lands for the People”

In an effort to go beyond an industry that simply says, “Go outside, it’s amazing,” Holland wants to pull from urban areas — the colors, the comedy, the music —to create a connection that encourages familiarity to get more people outside. He hopes for a more layered and diverse world of outdoor recreation that represents the variegated populace of the United States.

“If you go into the outdoors right now, it’s not really a good reflection of what our country is,” he says. “I think our country should be pretty bullish about ‘lands for the people’ because we literally started the concept of the national parks and preserving lands for everyone.”

In Holland’s eyes, getting more people into the outdoors is crucial, and the only way we’ll get people to care about the natural landscape — and protect it. As a white dude from Montana, Holland recognizes there are many without the same privilege he had to feel like they belong in the outdoors. Showing up as he does is how he encourages others to do it their way — whatever that may look like, 80’s colors and all.