The rain is drenching Darryl "Curtains" Jackson, coming down in sheets from an overhead machine programmed to dump water droplets at a relentless rate of 3.25 inches an hour. "This is a nice, steady rain," he observes calmly as drops fall from the ceiling and drain away into the grated floor below.
Curtains, Converse’s apparel director, is standing squarely in the middle of a rain tower—a silvery, high-tech box housed inside the biophysics lab at the Maryland campus of Gore, the company renowned for manufacturing waterproof and breathable Gore-Tex fabrics. The tower is meticulously engineered to simulate nasty weather of all kinds, including slanted downpours, harsh winds, and insistent drizzles, allowing Gore to rigorously test the efficacy of the materials it manufactures for brands around the globe.
Even in the heart of this fabricated deluge, Curtains doesn’t need an umbrella. On this day, he is wearing a hooded black zip-up jacket paired with striking orange and green high-top sneakers. These items are part of the Urban Utility collection, an entirely new line of weatherproof men’s shoes and outerwear that Converse has produced in a strategic partnership with Gore. Urban Utility marks Converse’s very first crack at producing truly technical products, and Curtains is personally putting them through the wringer. Ten minutes into the intense rain test, the jacket and shoes are holding up exceptionally well, and Curtains still remains completely dry. "I feel like I’m walking on dry land," he says with a smile.
This new line represents a significant departure for Converse. The Nike-owned brand, which only just released its first-ever collection of basic apparel last year, is relatively new to the broader clothing market. At the same time, Converse shoes have never been traditionally known for their rugged durability. A simple drizzly day can easily make the company’s trademark Chuck Taylor canvas sneakers feel akin to damp paper towels. For a certain type of loyal consumer, however, the lightweight flimsiness of the shoe is part of its enduring charm; the more weathered your Chucks become, the better they tend to look. Urban Utility, on the other hand, is built with a completely different philosophy—it is specifically designed to keep the elements out entirely.
Kicking Back
Despite its modern reputation for casual canvas footwear, the company actually possesses a hidden history of manufacturing utility shoes that is rarely spoken about today. When Marquis Mills Converse originally founded the company in 1908, its initial production focused exclusively on galoshes and heavy-duty rubber work boots. Later, during the turbulent years of World War II, Converse shifted its manufacturing focus to supply specialized footwear for soldiers fighting overseas. In more recent years, the company has occasionally collaborated with specialized brands like Hunter to make waterproof Chuck Taylors and has previously designed select lines of water-repellent sneakers under various weather-resistant initiatives.
By teaming up with Gore-Tex, however, Converse is attempting to build a much more intentionally high-performance collection of goods than ever before. The new shoes and jackets successfully blend Converse’s relaxed, casual DNA on the outside with Gore’s sophisticated technology on the inside. Adhered directly to the upper portion of the line’s three new pairs of shoes is a paper-thin layer of Gore’s eponymous material. "You’ll never see the Gore-Tex unless you want to," notes Doug Crawford, an account manager at Gore who closely oversaw the collaborative project with Converse.
A few hours before finding himself submerged in the artificial rain room, Curtains, Crawford, and a handful of other Gore employees toured a different suburban office building where the company conducts the vast majority of its shoe-related research and development. "This is typically the amount of sweat a human foot gives off over the course of a day," explains Jonathan Swegle, a footwear engineer at Gore, as he gently shakes a small vial filled with a clear liquid. "It’s a lot of moisture."
Gore-Tex is purposefully designed to transfer human sweat into water vapor, allowing the moisture to pass freely through the thin lining material and significantly reducing the dreaded swamp-foot effect common in heavy footwear. Simultaneously, the microscopic pores of Gore-Tex are engineered to be extraordinarily small—roughly 9 billion pores per square inch—meaning that external water droplets from rain or puddles cannot penetrate the shoe from the outside. If the Gore-Tex membrane functions precisely as intended, it should successfully keep the wearer’s foot warm and dry during a cold, wet autumn day, while remaining remarkably cool when temperatures rise.
Stretch Goals
The foundational material itself has a fascinating origin story. Bob Gore first developed the substance back in the late 1960s when he abruptly yanked a heated rod of polytetrafluoroethylene—a fluoropolymer best known for its commercial use in non-stick Teflon cookware—purely to see what physical reaction it would produce. When stretched rapidly at high temperatures, solid PTFE expands by more than 800 percent, creating an extraordinarily thin, micro-porous material composed of more than 70 percent air. Gore quickly learned that he could tweak this bio-inert plastic to suit a wide variety of demanding applications, including advanced medical implants and industrial electrical cables. Its most mainstream and culturally impactful use, however, ultimately came from fashioning the substance into a paper-thin membrane that could be laminated into garments or used as an internal lining to create breathable, water-resistant fabrics.
To ensure that the materials used in Converse’s new jacket and shoes are genuinely waterproof, Gore has established an extensive, rigorous testing process inside its labyrinthine Maryland office park. The main laboratory is brightly lit and filled to the brim with specialized machines designed to stretch, rub, and constantly poke at the proprietary material. "We have 650 different tests we can perform," explains Lynn Owens, a testing manager at Gore. Not every single material undergoes every single test, she clarifies; rather, each material is methodically abused based on the specific conditions it will face out in the real world.
Consumer lifestyle products like those from Converse do not necessarily require the exact same level of hyper-rigorous approval processes reserved for heavy-duty military gear. Even so, testing typically involves harsh abrasion trials, such as rubbing the fabric repeatedly between two heavy weights to measure precisely how long it takes to show wear and tear. Most candidate materials spend dozens, if not hundreds, of hours churning inside one of Gore’s 200 modified Kenmore washing machines that have been reconfigured to run continuously without stopping. "This is the roughest environment they’ll ever see," Crawford notes regarding the relentless wash test. Most consumer products also take a mandatory pass through the biophysics lab’s punishing rain chamber, as well as an environmental testing room where rows of blazing overhead lamps simulate intense sunlight while specialized fans cycle temperatures between a freezing 58 degrees below zero and a scorching 122 degrees Fahrenheit.
Street Smarts
While this level of scientific testing might initially seem like overkill for lifestyle fashion, both Converse and Gore stand to gain a tremendous amount from a successful commercial entrance into the burgeoning market middle ground where rugged outdoor gear intersects directly with high-end city clothes. Part of that ultimate success depends heavily on technical performance, but an equally vital component relies entirely on cultural cachet and the elusive cool-factor. This exact realization is why Converse deliberately partnered with popular Italian streetwear store Slam Jam and the Kanye West-approved artist Cali Dewitt to help design several standout pieces within the new collection, which officially debuts at Slam Jam locations.
The Urban Utility initiative marks Converse’s first aggressive attempt to capture a meaningful piece of the growing, highly lucrative streetwear trend. Gore, for its part, has already dipped its toes into similar waters. The company recently participated in a high-profile, highly sought-after collaboration between outdoor giant The North Face and cult-favorite streetwear brand Supreme to produce a line of weather-resistant gear. Items from that specific collaboration now command astronomical resale values, fetching upwards of $1,100 on platforms like eBay.
Back at Gore’s footwear headquarters, Curtains reflects on the distinct positioning of the brand. He explains that Converse has historically been known and loved for being universally accessible, both financially and culturally, across generations. The Urban Utility collection, however, is intentionally designed to edge the heritage brand into a slightly more elevated, premium realm. Converse is hoping that the strong, trusted association with Gore-Tex will successfully compel its younger, style-conscious consumers to drop $400 on an Urban Utility jacket and north of $150 on technical weather-resistant boots.
While those higher price points might cause sticker shock for traditional casual buyers, they are entirely routine for consumers accustomed to shopping from premiere streetwear brands like Supreme, which frequently utilize artificial scarcity and elevated pricing as core marketing tools. Yet, venturing into this territory is hardly what Converse has historically been known for. Can a century-old canvas sneaker company truly compete in the rarefied, fast-paced world of modern streetwear? Curtains pauses for a moment to consider the question, then answers with unwavering confidence. "Absolutely," he says, smiling. "Think about the coolest outfit in the history of time—a black leather jacket, a white t-shirt, blue Levi’s, and Converse."
