What is Melanzana made of?
LEADVILLE, Colo. — If you search for “Melanzana” on Instagram, you’ll see a lot of Italians making baked eggplant dishes.
Fritz Howard chuckled when I pointed this out to him. Howard, 57, is the founder of Melanzana, the Leadville-based outdoor apparel company specializing in fleece base layers. Howard started the company in 1994 as Eggplant Mountain Gear, but quickly ran into trademark issues. He went to the library, picked out a foreign language dictionary, and searched for “eggplant.” He liked the sound of melanzana, the Italian word for the nightshade.
More than 30 years later, many people refer to Howard’s company and its products as simply “Melly.”
“Melly’s cool,” said Jim Lepore, a retiree who lives in Breckenridge and drove to Leadville in January for his shopping appointment at Melanzana’s only store. The colorful fleece hoodies give him some street cred with the younger skiers in Breck, he said. But only some. “They still think I’m old,” he said with a laugh.
Lepore has added a few fleeces to his Melanzana collection since moving to Colorado 15 years ago. He spends summers on the east coast, where he gets a certain amount of satisfaction telling people they can’t buy what he’s wearing online.
Melanzana does not advertise. The company often goes months without posting to social media, and its most coveted items — the Micro Grid hoodies — are only sold in the company’s Leadville store, about 100 miles from Denver. Howard implemented the appointment system during the COVID-19 pandemic. Previously, shoppers would brave I-70 traffic only to find a line of customers out the door and the racks picked over.
“There are still a large group of people who are pretty upset about the appointment system that we have,” Erin Farrow, Melanzana’s communications lead, said. “But it was pretty much out of necessity.”
The pre-reservation days were “incredibly frustrating” for staff and shoppers, said Carly Bollinger, Melanzana’s head of planning. The current process allows customers to buy their desired colors and sizes, she said. I checked the online appointments Tuesday, March 3. The next available slot was Sept. 22. Melanzana limits in-person shoppers to one appointment for every six months, and people can buy no more than two items.
Despite the intentionally limited products, Melanzana has never been bigger. The company opened a second manufacturing facility in Alamosa last year that now has more than 40 workers. The expanded workforce could help Melanzana eventually fulfill online orders, Howard said.
“I hope they keep [the appointment system] going because it’s kind of like a little cult mystique,” Lepore said. “As soon as that goes away, they’ll be like everybody else.”
“Let’s go with ‘mystique’ instead of ‘cult,’” he added. “Cult sounds so sad.”
In January, my colleague Peter Vo and I drove to Leadville — the highest-elevation city in the United States, where Melanzana’s store serves as the gravitational center of the small commercial corridor — to learn more about this Melly mystique.
Howard and other Melanzana employees reject the idea that the company is "exclusive" or, worse, manufacturing scarcity. During a tour of Melanzana’s store and workshop, Bollinger told us that the fabric for the company’s signature Micro Grid hoodie is exclusive to Melanzana.
Farrow politely interrupted.
“You didn’t do anything wrong,” she assured Bollinger before turning to me and Peter.
“The fabric is made exclusively for Melanzana, but Melanzana is not exclusive,” Farrow said. “There's the perception that we're trying to be exclusive by, like, creating demand. It is 100% not our intention. Our values are what drive how we do everything in here.”
“Values” came up a lot during our visit to Leadville, and Melanzana’s community-minded operation and policies are well-documented.
“One of our main values is we are a local company, and we do everything in-house and locally. And that's just, it's just the way I like to operate,” Howard said. “It's got its own set of challenges. But it feels good. And I think customers appreciate that about us.”
Farrow said that all of Melanzana’s Leadville workers live locally, an impressive feat considering many Colorado mountain towns are struggling to retain workers who have been priced out of dwindling local housing options. Melanzana employees work four-day weeks with full health benefits and opportunities for profit-sharing and stock ownership. The company is currently hiring a fabric cutter for its Leadville store. The pay starts at $21/hour, about $6 more per hour than the state’s minimum wage.
Then there are the environmental efforts: The Leadville building’s power comes from rooftop solar panels the company installed 15 years ago. When Melanzana receives fabric that doesn’t meet its technical standards, its ReMelly’d program partners with independent Colorado makers that turn the fabric into blankets, bags, stuffed animals and more. The Smelly Melly process allows customers to trade in old fleeces for store credit. Melanzana takes the old products and recycles or resells them.
Do-good ethos aside, the fact remains that the “if you know, you know” nature of Melanzana, paired with the limited availability of its hoodies, is undoubtedly part of the appeal for many of the Melly faithful. Comedian Matt Lyons, who satirizes outdoor recreation culture for his million-plus social media followers, posted a video in 2023 titled “Every Person with a Melanzana.”
“I think the main goal of wearing this is just to have other people ask, ‘Where can I get one of those?’” Lyons says in the video, donning an orange Micro Grid hoodie. “And the answer is, really, nowhere.”
Polyester fleece as we know it today — lightweight, warm, water-resistant — dates back to the 1970s, when Patagonia founder and environmentalist Yvon Chouinard was searching for a way to improve upon his favorite wool sweater. Malinda Chouinard, Yvon’s wife, went to Los Angeles’ fashion district and discovered a fabric meant for toilet seat covers. She saw the potential for a sweater, the story goes. Not long after, Yvon partnered with Malden Mills (now Polartec) to develop the first fleece sweater.
Patagonia called its fleece fabric “Synchilla,” a portmanteau of synthetic chinchilla. The company’s one-snap pullover became a staple in the outdoor community by the mid-80s. A decade later, fleece was “everywhere,” from crunchy outdoor retailers to tony department stores.
It was around this time that Howard began experimenting with his own apparel. Raised in Massachusetts, he came to Colorado as a ski bum, bouncing from Boulder to Crested Butte to Telluride. He moved to Leadville when he was 26. Howard made his first pieces, including a fleece tank top, for his white-water rafting friends to wear under their life vests.
“They wanted a little bit of warmth,” he said, “but their arms free.”
Howard is tall, with soft eyes, big features and shoulder-length dark brown hair falling from a Melanzana beanie. He has a beard that’s more salt than pepper, and he speaks with the laid back affability of a liftie.
Peter and I met him at “the lab,” a workshop a few blocks east of Melanzana’s flagship store. Howard’s fat tire bike — which he rides to work every day — rested against the wall inside the entrance. The space is filled with tremendous cylinders of rolled-up fleece awaiting delivery to the main store. A Grateful Dead concert played on the TV on the wall opposite Howard’s desk (the job posting for the fabric cutter position said no experience is necessary, but that candidates must love 70s rock).
The lab includes design sketches and fabric swatches, but Howard said “we haven't had a lot going on in the design department lately. We've just been trying to meet the demand.”
Melanzana currently has about a dozen different products for sale, including its Micro Grid hoodies. Most of them are only available in-person with an appointment. A “sporadic selection” of overstock hoodies are available without an appointment, but customers are limited to one per person. Shoppers can buy beanies and socks online.
“So we've actually been cutting a lot of products,” Howard said. “We used to have way more products and a lot more variety.”
Howard’s fleece comes from Polartec, the same company that developed Patagonia’s pioneering Synchilla. Polartec is now based in Cleveland, Tennessee. Melanzana takes a lot of pride in the fact that from start to finish, its hoodies are made in the United States. “In the beginning, when I was making stuff myself and buying fabric from Polartec, it was less of a value and more of just the way it happened,” Howard said. “But then as we built from there, that kind of became a core value, I think, over time.”
Polyester comes from petroleum (i.e., crude oil). Factories melt petroleum-based plastics into threads that can be woven into fibers. If that sounds bad for the environment, that’s because it is. A 2017 report from the UK found that “producing plastic-based fibres for textiles uses an estimated 342 million barrels of oil every year.” Polyester is a primary material in fast fashion, an industry responsible for a significant portion of global emissions.
Natural materials like wool and cotton are also resource intensive. Producing a single cotton shirt takes more than 700 gallons of water, whereas a polyester shirt requires about 90 gallons. However, cotton is biodegradable; polyester takes centuries to break down. And as fashion industry expert Michael Palladino recently told NPR, polyester never really goes away; it just disintegrates into microplastics.
Melanzana’s most popular item, the Micro Grid hoodies, are made with 100% recycled polyester developed from “US-sourced post-consumer waste” (e.g., recycled water bottles). Some environmental groups have accused businesses that use recycled polyester of “greenwashing,” or purporting to be more sustainable than they actually are. And recent research from the nonprofit Changing Markets Foundation found that recycled polyester releases more microplastics than virgin polyester.
“I’m not a textile engineer or a fiber expert, but we have brought in some natural fibers,” Howard said when asked about the use of synthetic materials. He highlighted one of Melanzana’s more recent additions, the Merino Base Hoodie, which is 85% wool sourced from New Zealand by way of Thailand. That hoodie debuted about five years ago. Farrow said it’s “taken off” in popularity.
Bollinger reiterated that Melanzana wants to introduce more natural materials. “But there are just no mills in the U.S. that are making quality [natural fibers] to the standards that we want,” she added.
Polartec has an entire page on its website dedicated to its partnership with Melanzana. The page includes some variation of the word “sustainable” nine times.
Jimmy Funkhouser bristles at that word. He is the founder of Denver’s FERAL, an outdoor retailer focused on secondhand gear. “When something means everything it means nothing,” he said about “sustainability.” (He holds a master’s degree in environmental management sustainability, so this derision is self-aware, he pointed out.)
“There's no real, true standard for what ‘sustainable’ looks like,” Funkhouser said. “What we can say with complete certainty is that, whether it’s a shirt or piece of gear or any other object, the most sustainable version of that is the one that already exists because the environmental cost has already been paid.”
People concerned about the environmental footprint of buying gear should consider two main things before tapping their credit card, Funkhouser said: is the product built to last, and can it be bought preowned?
Online reviewers praise Melanzana’s quality and warmth. The company doesn’t have a dedicated preowned section, but it occasionally resells items through its Smelly Melly trade-in program.
Funkhouser is a fan of Howard’s operation. “I think it should be celebrated that Melanzana has held true to their culture of not just American-built, but local-built,” he said. “Their neighbors are coming in and running the sewing machines. I think that’s great. I think it’s magic.”
Ninety-five percent of the used gear at FERAL comes from locals, Funkhouser said. Micro Grid hoodies from Melanzana are few and far in between, though. Nobody wants to get rid of them.
“People definitely covet Melanzana items,” Funkhouser said. “When they do come through our used section, they’re usually gone within 48 hours. People sniff them out very quickly.”
Melanzana’s secondhand market is a world of its own. A subreddit dedicated to the company has thousands of weekly visitors. One of the forum’s moderators launched a new subreddit at the end of January exclusively for selling or trading Mellys. It’s serious business; the rules and etiquette section has 20 bullet points.
On eBay, sellers often list the Micro Grid hoodies — currently retailing for $96 at the Leadville store — for north of $150, a more than 50% markup. Many sellers are asking for more than $200.
Some people, desperate for their own lightweight, warm fleece hoodie, have resorted to sewing their own. A “make your own gear” subreddit includes dozens of posts with homemade Mellys, part of the reason Farrow asked us not to photograph any of the sewing patterns in the Melanzana workshop.
Melanzana is far from the only company making fleece hoodies. There are the industry giants like Patagonia and North Face, yes, but many smaller, independent operations offer comparable products.
Ram Mikulas, from Littleton, Colorado, started SkyGoat with his wife in 2020. You’d be forgiven for mistaking their colorful “GOATgrid” fleece hoodies for a Melly. Last year, 5280 Magazine published a piece with the headline, “Could SkyGoat Be the Next Melanzana?” The biggest appeal, according to the magazine, was the online availability. Mikulas ships to all 50 states. Mikulas has since moved the operation from Colorado to Montana.
Other cottage companies like Senchi Designs (Portland, Oregon), Fayettechill (Fayetteville, Arkansas), LightHeart Gear (Fletcher, North Carolina) and Houda Trail (Eugene, Oregon) sell very similar, made-in-USA fleece hoodies. All of them use Polartec fabric.
So why does Melly still reign supreme? The company has been around longer than these brands, but from a product standpoint, Melanzana’s Micro Grid hoodies are not “technically superior to any other fleece midlayer,” said Steven Smith, the host of My Life Outdoors, a gear-focused YouTube channel with more than a million subscribers, in a 2021 video titled “Is Melanzana Worth The Hype?”
“But that’s not the point,” said Smith, a Texan who learned to ski in Leadville and considers the city a home away from home.
“If you see someone wearing [a Melanzana] and you say, ‘Hey, nice Melly,’ you are signaling that you are in the know, that you have a shared experience. And that, I think, is the appeal, and why you should buy one,” he said. “Not because it’s popular or because it’s the best, but because you know it’s quality. It’s affordable. It was made ethically by employees who are treated well from a company that is resisting economic exploitation.”
An outdoor brand having a mystique like Melanzana’s is not unusual, said Rachel Gross, author of “Shopping All the Way to the Woods: How the Outdoor Industry Sold Nature to America.” Seventy years ago, Gross said, then-regional companies like REI and L.L. Bean had similar devoted followings among outdoor enthusiasts.
“I see a really clear throughline between the identity this brand [Melanzana] has cultivated and predecessors that have since gone mainstream,” Gross said.
What separates Melanzana from its predecessors is the company’s resistance to scaling, Gross said, which in turn keeps the mystique alive. The brand, she said, appeals to people who “want to be able to speak to their peers and say, ‘Hey, I have access to this cool stuff… I’m one of the cognoscenti who can claim an insider knowledge of specialized brands.’”
Bollinger and Farrow took me and Peter to the very back of Melanzana’s 7,500-square-foot building, where rolls of fleece, delivered via box truck from the lab, await the fabric cutters.
One room over, the fabric cutters take the rolls, place them on an industrial spool, and unroll and stack the sheets of fleece on top of each other to create a multicolored lasagna of Micro Grid. They arrange a mosaic of sewing patterns on top of the fabric, put on their respirators and chain metal gloves and fire up the industrial fabric cutters that look like portable band saws.
The machines drowned out the relaxing tenor of Dean Johnson, who played from a Spotify playlist. One of the worker’s dogs putzed around, looking for a sliver of sunlight to lay in. This was the chillest area of Melanzana’s operation.
The fabric cutters bundle the cut pieces by section (e.g., all the left arm sections stay together) and send them to the sewing section in the main room, where dozens of workers on Juki sewing machines assemble the hoodies, section by section, in full view of Melanzana’s customers.
If music was playing in this part of Melanzana’s workshop, I couldn’t hear it. The sewing machines whirred constantly like cicadas. “I actually prefer to work out here on the floor,” said Kelly West, Melanzana’s head of manufacturing. “It’s white noise. It helps me work better.”
West, who oversees the sewing department, has been with Melanzana for almost 10 years, making her one of the company’s longest-tenured employees. She remembers when the Leadville store was half the size it is now and the company only had a dozen sewers. Today, Melanzana has 35 sewers in Leadville and more than 25 in Alamosa.
“It's exciting to see the growth,” West said. “It really is.”
The sewers work in modules of two to four people. Individual sewers never sew the entirety of one hoodie. They work on one specific part before handing it off to their module mates. For example, one sewer might be responsible for attaching the arms, while the next person is responsible for attaching the hood. Another sewer will add the Melanzana patch. This process makes production as efficient as possible, Bollinger said.
Peter and I asked how long it takes for the sewers to assemble one Micro Grid hoodie. Farrow said that was “impossible to answer.”
“Production work is not one single thing. It’s multiple things at a time,” she said. “It starts at fabric inspection. It starts at unloading the truck. I think that’s a really hard question to answer.”
When the sewers are done, they drop the hoodies in a plastic bin. The quality control team examines each article of clothing, barcodes them and adds them to the retail-ready inventory. Shoppers with an appointment then get their pick of the litter.
Howard’s intentionally slow growth doesn’t make Melanzana’s growth any less dramatic.
“Obviously it's changed a lot,” he said. “It was just a one-man show when I started just making stuff. I had a little office space in Leadville. It was 200 bucks a month. And I was just making stuff by myself. And then it just slowly evolved from there into what it is today.”
And what it is today is a rare company that’s nationally recognized but sold only locally. If nothing else, it’s the unofficial uniform of Leadville.
When Peter and I walked out of Melanzana, a man in a forest green Micro Grid hoodie was cleaning the windows at LeadVelo Bicicasa, the bicycle shop across the street. We drove a few blocks down the street to High Mountain Pies, per Farrow’s recommendation, for pizza and wings.
The pizza chef wore a charcoal Melanzana beanie.
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. To read more about why you can trust the journalism of Rocky Mountain PBS, please visit our editorial standards and practices page.
