MARMOT - THE REVIVALISTS
How Two Friends from Spanish Harlem Helped Put New-York-Cool Back in the Marmot Mammoth Parka
By Richard Osborn
Rapper Felix Thillet wasn’t even around when the Marmot Mammoth Parka debuted in the Reagan ‘80s, an extreme-weather coat perhaps best suited for a Denali basecamp or some Arctic outback.
Neither was Miguel Rodriguez, aka Mikey Phelps, a DJ and community activist with a knack for unification.
How is it then that this pair of twentysomethings sparked a revival for this prized piece of puffy winter-wear in, of all places, New York City?
“We’re just two Puerto Ricans from Harlem,” said Thillet, 26.
The iconic Mammoth Parka, known on the street by a variety nicknames, including Murm and Big Boy, but mostly Biggie, truly came into its own in this urban landscape in the aughts. It was a down-filled Gore-Tex dream that came in a variety of bold colors. Beginning in 2009, it was sold exclusively at Paragon Sports’ flagship store in Union Square, originally retailing for $575.
It was all Paragon could do to keep them in stock.
Thillet was 11 when he saw his first Biggie. He still remembers how the oversized orange coat looked draped over the shoulders of a middle-school classmate.
“As a kid, I didn’t really like fashion. I was into video games and toys and stuff. But once I saw that coat, I fell in love with it,” he said. “Then I started noticing it more and more. I said, ‘What is this, a New York thing? Why is everybody wearing the Marmot Mammoth?’ It was like a title. It showed your ranking, almost. If you had a Mammoth in the ‘hood, you were somebody, you knew how to be fly, you knew how to dress. It was like a badge of honor.”
“It was like a pair of warm socks in the winter, a necessity,” said Rodriguez, 24. “You might have had one in navy blue, black or brown, a dark, dull color. But whoever in your ‘hood that was the most ‘G’ had the brightest color or the newest season. If you had a yellow or a lime green, you were the top honcho on the block.”
In those days, as was the case with Nike’s Air Jordan, you had to be careful where you wore your Mammoth in the city. There was a series of thefts, and in 2013, a shooting in Bryant Park left a teenager wheelchair-bound. That was enough to convince Marmot to pull the jackets out of the New York market altogether.
Other brands, Moncler, Canada Goose, etc., began to surface in the void. But neither Thillet nor Rodriguez ever lost their passion for their favorite piece of clothing. And they weren’t alone. They haunted message boards and chat rooms, eventually stumbling upon a Facebook group that served as a one of the earliest secondary marketplaces for the Mammoth Parka. As it turned out, as evidenced by the non-stop posts, the Biggie had a sizeable and active cult following.
“2013 purple size large no flaws”
“Any biggies size m for sale?”
“Taxi cab yellow biggie for sale 2012 silver inside size large for the low talk to me”
It was here that Thillet and Rodriguez, both of whom grew up in Spanish Harlem, first met. After a few buy-sell transactions, a budding friendship — and partnership — was born.
“It made sense that we came together,” said Rodriguez, who began collecting and customizing jackets for resale to well-known rappers and celebrity artists, often adorning them with 3M reflective tape.
Thillet, meanwhile, was becoming a gray-market-maker of sorts, an authority. He was setting prices for pre-owned Biggies available on Facebook, eBay, Craigslist and elsewhere.
A dedicated Instagram account (@marmotmammoth) launched by Thillet in 2018 soon took on a life of its own, attracting fashion-forward followers from all corners of the globe. The demand was real. Local stores, Paragon included, began stocking the Mammoth Parka again. There were collabs with Opening Ceremony and The Apartment Tokyo.
Said Rodriguez: “We were keeping the Biggie legend alive.”
With momentum building, Thillet and Rodriguez decided to create an annual holiday centered around the Biggie, settling on Thanksgiving Day for the inaugural event. A small but enthusiastic crowd of 20, a Teletubby blur of purple, teal, red and yellow, showed up that first year, posing for a team photo at 103rd Street and Lexington Avenue. That number doubled in 2019, this time gathering in front of M&M World in Times Square. It was an ideal spot to meet up — those colorful Biggies playing off the giant candy high above.
Even in the midst of a pandemic, Biggie Day 3, again set for Thanksgiving, is shaping up to be the biggest yet.
The real beauty of this grassroots effort is the sense of community and belonging it has created.
“We’re trying to show that we can bring people together without being violent,” said Thillet. “I didn’t know anybody on Biggie Day 1, except Mikey and a few friends I brought with me. The other people, I didn’t know them from a hole in the wall. I just knew they had Biggie on, so they were my friends.”
“We want to keep it free. We want to keep it meaningful. We want to keep it hip. We want to bring the community together in different ways,” said Rodriguez on the future of Biggie Day. “And we want to highlight the world’s best jacket.”
In hindsight, it makes all the sense in the world that these two Harlemites helped lead the Marmot Mammoth renaissance.
“This is who we are,” says Rodriguez. “Maybe the coat helped us project our confidence. It was, ‘Hey, we’re somebody. This is what we stand for. This is where we’re from.’”
Sometimes it isn’t about your target audience. A California company produces a technical outdoor adventure jacket for snowboarders, snowshoers, skiers and ice climbers, only to have it become an unlikely must-have for hip-hoppers and tastemakers on the streets of New York.
“We’re wearing it on the 6 Train, not on a mountain,” said Rodriguez.
“As a New York staple, people think about Timberland boots, about the New York Yankee fitted hat, stuff New Yorkers have been wearing for years,” said Thillet. “I think the Biggie is just like that. The ‘hood is what green-lighted it. The ‘hood makes things cool. The Biggie became one of those things. It became a Yankee hat. It became a pair of Timberlands. It became a staple. It became historic.”
