The rain is drenching Darryl "Curtains" Jackson, coming down in sheets from an overhead machine programmed to dump water droplets at a rate of 3.25 inches an hour. It is a controlled environment designed to mimic severe weather. "This is a nice, steady rain," he says, as the artificial drops fall from the ceiling and drain directly into the grated floor below.
Curtains, the apparel director for Converse, is standing firmly in the middle of a rain tower. This structure is a silvery, specialized box housed inside the biophysics lab at the Maryland campus of W. L. Gore & Associates, the company internationally renowned for manufacturing waterproof and breathable Gore-Tex fabrics. The rain tower has been meticulously engineered to simulate nasty weather of all kinds—including slanted downpours, harsh winds, and an insistent drizzle—allowing Gore to rigorously test the efficacy of the advanced materials it manufactures for various partner brands.
Even standing in the center of this fabricated deluge, Curtains does not need an umbrella. On this particular day, he is wearing a hooded black zip-up jacket paired with striking orange and green high-top sneakers. These garments form part of the Urban Utility collection, a brand-new line of weatherproof men’s shoes and outerwear that Converse has produced in a strategic partnership with Gore. The Urban Utility initiative represents Converse’s first serious foray into truly technical products, and Curtains is personally putting the gear through the ringer. Ten minutes into the intense rain test, both the jacket and the shoes are holding up seamlessly. Curtains still feels completely dry. "I feel like I’m walking on dry land," he says.
This ambitious new line marks a significant departure for Converse. Owned by athletic footwear and apparel giant Nike, Converse only recently released its very first collection of basic apparel last year, making it a relative newcomer to the broader clothing market. At the same time, the brand’s signature shoes are not traditionally known for their rugged durability or weather resistance. On the contrary, a simple drizzly day can easily make the company’s trademark Chuck Taylor canvas sneakers feel like damp paper towels. For a certain type of loyal consumer, however, the lightweight flimsiness of the classic shoe is actually part of its enduring charm; historically, the more weathered your Chucks look, the better they appear. The Urban Utility line, on the other hand, is designed from the ground up to keep the elements entirely out.
Kicking Back
Despite its modern reputation as a maker of casual canvas sneakers, the company actually boasts a rich history of producing utility footwear, though it is a chapter of its heritage that is rarely spoken about in mainstream marketing. When Marquis Mills Converse first founded the Converse Rubber Shoe Company in 1908 in Malden, Massachusetts, the firm exclusively produced galoshes and heavy-duty rubber work boots designed to protect workers against harsh New England winters. Decades later, during World War II, Converse shifted its manufacturing capabilities to produce specialized footwear and protective gear for soldiers heading overseas. More recently, the company has occasionally dipped its toes back into weather-resistant design by collaborating with brands like Hunter to create waterproof variations of Chuck Taylors, alongside developing separate lines of water-repellent lifestyle sneakers.
By partnering with Gore-Tex for the Urban Utility collection, however, Converse is attempting to build a much more intentionally high-performance collection of goods than it has in recent decades. The newly engineered shoes and jacket blend Converse’s unmistakable casual DNA on the outside with Gore’s heavy-duty technical technology on the hidden inside. Adhered securely to the upper portion of the line’s three new pairs of shoes is a remarkably thin layer of Gore’s eponymous waterproof 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 Curtains found himself standing inside the damp, echoing rain room, he, Crawford, and a handful of other Gore employees were touring a different suburban office building nearby where the company conducts the vast majority of its footwear-related research and development. "This is typically the amount of sweat a human foot gives off over the course of a day," says 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 sweat away from the body, converting liquid moisture into water vapor so that it can easily pass outward through the microscopic structure of the thin lining material. This mechanism drastically reduces the notorious "swamp-foot" effect common in sealed rubber boots. Meanwhile, the pores of Gore-Tex are engineered to be extraordinarily small—roughly nine billion pores per square inch—meaning individual water droplets from an external downpour are simply too large to penetrate the shoe from the outside. If the Gore-Tex membrane functions as intended, it should successfully keep the wearer’s foot warm and dry on a cold, rainy day, while remaining cool and breathable when temperatures rise.
Stretch Goals
The foundational technology behind these weather-resistant garments dates back to the late 1960s, when Bob Gore first developed the material by abruptly yanking a heated rod of polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE)—a polymer widely recognized for its commercial use as non-stick Teflon cookware—simply to see what would happen under sudden physical stress. When stretched quickly and under specific thermal conditions, solid PTFE expands by more than 800 percent, creating an extraordinarily thin, micro-porous material composed of more than 70 percent air. Bob Gore quickly learned that he could manipulate and tweak this bio-inert plastic to suit a vast array of demanding industrial and commercial applications, ranging from advanced medical vascular grafts and patches to high-performance electrical cables and aerospace insulation.
Its most famous and mainstream commercial application, however, came from fashioning the polymer into a paper-thin membrane that could be laminated directly onto fabrics or utilized as an interior lining to create breathable, highly water-resistant textiles.
To ensure that the fabrics and materials used in Converse’s new jacket and shoes are genuinely and reliably waterproof, Gore has established an extensive, multi-layered testing protocol inside its sprawling, labyrinthine office park. The main testing laboratory is brightly lit and filled with a battery of specialized industrial machines designed to mechanically stretch, rub, twist, and poke at Gore’s proprietary materials. "We have 650 different tests we can perform," says Lynn Owens, a testing manager at Gore, explaining that not every experimental material undergoes every single test. Instead, each individual material is methodically abused based on the specific environment and conditions it is expected to encounter out in the real world.
Consumer products manufactured by fashion brands like Converse do not necessarily require the exact same stringent military-grade approval process mandated for tactical gear, but the standards remain exceptionally high. Testing for these consumer lines typically involves rigorous abrasion assessments, such as rubbing the fabric continuously between two weighted surfaces to determine precisely how many hours of friction it takes to wear down the weave. Furthermore, most candidate materials spend dozens, if not hundreds, of consecutive hours churning away inside one of Gore’s 200 modified Kenmore washing machines, which have been custom-rigged to run indefinitely without stopping. "This is the roughest environment they’ll ever see," Crawford says, pointing toward the relentless wash test stations. Following the laundry endurance trials, most consumer products are subjected to a mandatory pass through the biophysics lab’s punishing rain chamber, as well as an adjacent climate-controlled room featuring banks of bright overhead bulbs that simulate blazing sunlight, alongside powerful industrial fans capable of fluctuating ambient temperatures from a bone-chilling 58 degrees below zero up to a scorching 122 degrees Fahrenheit.
Street Smarts
While such extreme laboratory stress-testing might initially seem like industrial overkill, both Converse and Gore stand to gain a tremendous amount from a successful commercial entrance into the increasingly crowded market middle ground where functional outdoor technical gear intersects directly with high-end city streetwear. Part of achieving that market success depends heavily on technical performance and durability; the other vital half depends entirely on cultural relevance and street cred.
To secure that crucial cool factor, Converse deliberately partnered with the influential Italian streetwear boutique Slam Jam and the Kanye West-approved artist Cali Dewitt to help design several standout pieces within the new collection. The resulting collection officially launches at Slam Jam and select global retailers.
The Urban Utility launch marks Converse’s first aggressive attempt to capture a meaningful share of the growing, frenzied global streetwear market. For its part, Gore has already dipped its toes quite successfully into that lucrative stream. The company recently participated in a high-profile, highly sought-after collaboration between heritage outdoor brand The North Face and legendary streetwear powerhouse Supreme, producing a limited line of water-slicking outerwear. Due to intense demand and limited supply, pieces from that specific Supreme and Gore-Tex collaboration are currently trading on the secondary market for upwards of $1,100 on platforms like eBay.
Back at Gore’s specialized footwear headquarters, Curtains acknowledges that Converse has historically been known as an accessible brand, both culturally and financially, appealing to a broad demographic across generations. The Urban Utility collection, however, is intended to edge the brand into a slightly more elevated, premium realm. Converse is clearly betting that the powerful association with Gore-Tex technology will compel its traditionally budget-conscious young consumers to drop around $400 on an Urban Utility technical jacket and north of $150 on specialized weatherproof boots.
Those higher retail price points may shock traditional Converse buyers, but they are hardly surprising to consumers accustomed to purchasing apparel from high-end streetwear brands like Supreme, which frequently utilize artificial exclusivity and elevated pricing strategies as core marketing tools. Yet entering the rarefied upper tier of fashion is unfamiliar territory for a brand whose identity was forged on basketball courts and suburban sidewalks. Can Converse truly compete and thrive in the elite, trend-driven streetwear world? Curtains briefly ponders the question before answering with calm, measured confidence.
"Absolutely," he says, smiling as he considers the enduring power of the brand’s aesthetic legacy. "Think about the coolest outfit in the history of time—a black leather jacket, a white t-shirt, blue Levis, and Converse."
