Columbia Women's Best Dam Down Jacket
This super smooth Omni-Tech puffy meets every style and technical requirement to a tee. Its 700 fill-power down provides excellent insulation, and Omni-Heat thermal reflective boosts heat retention by an average of 20 percent. The result? All day, all season warmth. A unique style twist relegates the baffling to the jacket's interior, leaving the exterior sleek and super clean. Add to that pretty contrast stitching that matches the pop-color waterproof zips and you get a look that's subtle yet exquisite.
Columbia's highest level of waterproof breathability creates an impenetrable moisture barrier and encourages interior airflow, while underarm venting zips open to disperse excess heat at the end of a leg-burning run. The hood flips up to reveal a bonded hood brim that shelters your face from the driving snow. The extended, drop-tail design provides crucial, draft-fighting coverage.
It helps maintain warmth and prevent heat loss with the highest heat retention per gram in the industry. And it helps regulate your temperature by reflecting and retaining the warmth your body generates, while dissipating moisture and excess heat to keep you comfortable.
Columbia Sportswear's Omni-Tech products provide premium waterproof and breathable protection by keeping outside elements from getting in, while still allowing moisture vapors to move away from the skin. Microporous membranes keep water from penetrating the fabric yet allow perspiration to escape, so you stay dry.
Omni-Tech's first layer of defense is Omni-Shield, which prevents most water from ever making contact with the inner layers. Next, a microporous membrane provides the primary and most impervious layer of defense by completely blocking the passage of water molecules into the fabric. Omni-Tech membranes are 100% air permeable, which allows moisture vapors to escape. This superior breathability keeps you dry from the inside out. Lastly, lining materials protect the Omni-Tech membrane from underneath, while adding additional wicking properties.
Founded in 1938, Columbia Sportswear Company has grown from a small family-owned hat distributor to one of the world's largest outerwear brands and the leading seller of skiwear in the United States. Columbia's extensive product line includes a wide variety of outerwear, sportswear, rugged footwear and accessories. Columbia specializes in developing innovative products that are functional yet stylish and offer great value. Eighty-year-old matriarch Gert Boyle, Chairman of the Board, and her son, Tim Boyle, President and CEO, lead the company.
Columbia's history starts with Gert's parents, Paul and Marie Lamfrom, when they fled Germany in 1937. They bought a small hat distributorship in Portland, Oregon, and named it Columbia Hat Company, after the river bordering the city. Soon frustrated by poor deliveries from suppliers, the Lamfroms decided to start manufacturing products themselves. In 1948, Gert married college sweetheart Neal Boyle, who joined the family business and later took the helm of the growing company. When Neal suddenly died of a heart attack in 1970, Gert enlisted help from Tim, then a college senior. After that it wasn't long before business really started to take off. Columbia was one of the first companies to make jackets from waterproof/breathable fabric. They introduced the breakthrough technology called the Columbia Interchange System, in which a shell and liner combine for multiple wearing options. In the early 1980s, then 60 year-old Gert began her role as "Mother Boyle" in Columbia's successful and popular advertising campaign.
The company went public in 1998 and moved into a new era as a world leader in the active outdoor apparel industry. Today, Columbia Sportswear employs more than 1,800 people around the world and distributes and sells products in more than 50 countries and to more than 12,000 retailers internationally.
