Patagonia's Latest Grantee & New Palo Alto Store

Saturday, the new Patagonia store in Palo Alto held their Grand Opening. With hourly raffles, live music, and community organizations in-house, it was really fun. (Not to mention the shopping. I came out with an organic cotton/hemp blend jacket and an organic cotton cap.) The new space suits the store well. I was impressed with their new line of shoes and they have an entire section devoted to eco books. (This is not new from other stores, but it's right in front where it's easy to see.) I was also happy to see that since their opening, they've gotten a lot of pro-environment petitions signed. That's something I've always admired about Patagonia.

A pioneer in technical and eco clothing, Patagonia is now making jackets out of recycled polyester as well as expanding their organic product line. I was also impressed by their children's clothing since I'd never really looked at that before having a baby. Our daughter's been decked-out in Patagonia since birth, but it was all gifts - this was my first time in one of their stores since.

Patagonia gave away a $1000 gift certificate at 4pm to a local woman through a drawing, they had some fantastic ice cream, courtesy of Rick's Ice Cream ("Palo Alto's gourmet micro creamery"), great cookies, drinks, and the Save Nature organization provided some very cool bugs to pet - an African millipede, a pair of not-so-scary domesticated giant cockroaches, and a couple of exotic walking sticks. Hidden Villa and the Sierra Club also had tables present. A $5000 grant was presented to Ventana Wildlife Society. They had the most votes on the Patagonia site for their organization. It was well-deserved.

I'll be going back to Patagonia again once the crowd subsides to do more shopping - they have some great skirts, shirts, tunics, jackets, shorts and cropped pants to last through summer and early fall.

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(Also posted at SFBayStyle.)