Reese Cooper and UGG Are Really Outside

When an editor is invited on a “press trip” — shorthand for a brand-sponsored, multi-day excursion in a far-flung locale, where they’re wined, dined, and shown a new product, initiative, or innovation in hopes of having a story written about said thing — the attendees are typically a gumbo of journalists who work for major media outlets, freelance writers, and the ever-present crop of influencers, all jockeying to create the best content so they can go on more trips and get more free gear.

So when I arrived at the Usal store on a sunny Friday morning in Los Angeles to catch a shuttle bus to Mammoth for a weekend of fly fishing, hiking and other revelry in the great outdoors, all courtesy of the new Reese Cooper x UGG collection, I was surprised to see that I was the sole media member there, a journalistic lone wolf surrounded not by the usual smattering of my peers, but by 10 of Reese Cooper’s closest friends.

Reese chuckled when I relayed the unconventional nature of the group to him the next day. After all, unconventional is the norm for a designer who’s garnered great acclaim by tastefully creating the clothes that he and his friends want to wear: a nuanced blend of heritage Americana and functional, yet not-quite-gorpy outdoor gear via both his eponymous label and his Reese Cooper Outdoor Supply diffusion line.

“Most people who have a collaboration like this would want to do some sort of launch party,” he says with a grin, leaning back in a camp chair while the towering mountains around Mammoth throw a shadow across his face. “For me, it’s more like ‘let’s get the f*ck out of Los Angeles for a couple days and do something with a core group of friends.”

After spending 48-odd hours with Reese, it was clear that he’s a provider. That nature comes through not just in his eagerness to bring friends along for the ride, but in how he approaches design — functional, practical, and wearable for daily life, but with enough sauce-providing details that his creations are never stale or simplistic. His eponymous brand’s UGG collaboration, consisting of a trio of Cordura shroud-equipped Classic Mini boots and a duo of Classic Ultra Mini boots lined with GORE-TEX, was born of a simple yet profound idea: making a piece of UGG footwear that someone with an active lifestyle could wear every day.

Prior to the collaboration, Reese wasn’t an active UGG wearer. It wasn’t because he didn’t like the brand. It’s because he’s so tough on his own shoes. “Any time I get a new pair of shoes, for whatever reason, they’re smoked within six days,” he said. “So I’d always be thinking about making a shoe that lasts, and I’d see plenty of people in Los Angeles wearing UGGs that looked like they needed to be retired six months ago.”

That observation, along with a pair of UGG slippers that Reese’s girlfriend Juliet Johnstone bought him as a Christmas present, got the creative wheels spinning. After conceptualizing a way to waterproof his personal pair so they wouldn’t look like they’d been through the proverbial meat grinder of daily life, kismet struck: UGG reached out to ask if he’d be interested in a collaboration.

“I said yes so fast,” Reese recollected. “I already had the idea in mind because I’d been trying to do it, and now I had access to the resources to do it at scale.”

The high-top boot was the first pair to come to fruition, with its Cordura shell serving as the outer layer to a proper triple-layered piece of weather-resistant footwear. The innovation that the durable material unlocked? An ability to wear the boot multiple ways: high with pants tucked in, pooled at the ankle with pants falling atop, cinched to keep the elements out. The choice is entirely the wearer’s, without any pre-existing vision imposed on them. “If we made a tall, three-layer, fully waterproof boot, it would forever be that tall,” said Reese. “A brand the size of UGG needs to make a product that works with a lot of people, and though I have the luxury of not having to do that with my own label, it’s an enjoyable challenge to think bigger in terms of the market — and UGG was so open to my ideas for that market. There was no pushback from them, and a lot of trust.”

As if to prove a point, shortly after Reese finished his thought, Romil Hemnani — a musician and friend of Reese’s, best known for his work with BROCKHAMPTON — went clomping by in a pair of gigantic, Mossy Oak-printed Sky High Farm Workwear x BOGS boots. “See, I love boots like that, but it takes someone like Rome to pull them off,” said Reese, a broad, Cheshire Cat-style grin creeping across his face. “I wanted to think beyond what just my friends and I would wear and try to create something everyone would wear.”

As Reese sees it, the low-top, GORE-TEX boot was a natural extension of that inclusive ethos. It’s essentially indistinguishable from an in-line UGG Ultra Mini boot, save for its sturdier outer material, taped seams, small GORE-TEX logo on the midfoot, and co-branded heel tag. “The great thing about UGG is that it’s always been able to cater to what’s cool in the present moment without changing its shape and functionality,” he says. “I compare an UGG boot to something like the Levi’s 501, a product that’s been around for decades but remains largely unchanged besides being produced in whatever washes are en vogue in the present moment.”

The overall thought process was expounded upon in the Reese Cooper x UGG campaign, which shows Reese and his crew taking the collaboration out for a spin in rural Georgia. There’s a seaplane, a raft, and a lot of shenanigans, a fitting setting for a designer who’s deeply knowledgeable but never pretentious.

“The aspirational message of most campaigns is so funny to me,” Reese notes. “It’s always like ‘You can be a top-performing athlete,’ or ‘if you get this thing, you’re going to have f*cking adventures, man,’” he says. “I wanted to flip that a bit and be like ‘hey, these are UGGs and now you can get them wet.’ It was that simple, and Adrian [Nieto, a photographer and director] did an incredible job of ensuring that ethos, straightforward but with a little bit of silliness. It was about narrative and what you can do more than the product itself.”

And it must be said: the Reese Cooper x UGG collection is excellent for, well, doing stuff. They held up marvelously hiking around Mammoth’s famed Convict Lake and during a trek through tall, dry grass to a famed fly fishing spot in the neighboring town of Bishop, as well as chilling around the campfire enjoying some “Bron Juice.” The Classic Mini’s versatile shroud protects the wearer from the elements, but can be cinched low if its full high-top coverage is not needed. The Ultra Mini may be the most unassuming GORE-TEX shoe on the market today — all the functional tech you need sans the bells, whistles and technical flourishes associated with most shoes that feature the material. Though Cordura and GORE-TEX are undeniably advanced materials, in a way, the Reese Cooper x UGG collection is a return to UGG’s founding principle: creating simple, warm sheepskin boots worn by surfers for warmth and comfort.

“I always remind myself that outdoor gear doesn’t have to be that deep, because, like, 95% of Arc’Teryx shell jackets are being worn to Whole Foods,” Reese quips. “You have to design with the casual outdoor gear wearer in mind, so to me I try to make something that works for quite literally being outside, no matter where you are. That enables me to push things a bit further and get more abstract.”

And, at the end of the day, the brand’s audience — both Reese’s inner circle and the outside community — serve as the final judge of whether the collaboration passes muster. “I’ve gotten all these messages to the extent of ‘This is the first pair of UGGs I’ve ever had,’ so I think it’s mission accomplished,” Reese says.

He stands up from his camp chair. “Let’s go fly fishing, man.”

The Reese Cooper x UGG collection will release via reese-cooper.com, ugg.com and select retailers on April 11. The Classic Mini is priced at $250 USD, and the Ultra Mini at $200 USD.

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