First things first, seek out the yarn behind the fabric you see in front of you.

“Going through listings of product means trying to understand what kind of life the product has had and what kind of care the product has had along the way,” Lawson explains. “For me, the most interesting products are ones where the story is captured.”

“Another thing I look for is, does it have a description of the specific item itself? You know, ‘this is three seasons old. This has been around the world with me.’ If it’s a product that’s clearly seen some use, the seller should speak to it. You’re relying so much on the amount of information and the accuracy of the information the seller provides. If it just says ‘used jacket’ but then from the photographs it’s visibly been through the ringer, you need to start considering what’s not been described.”

“With Gore products, the one thing that will really encourage durability is seasonal washing,” Lawson explains. “Washing a jacket the right way does so much: preventing oil contamination within, preventing oil buildup on the fabric’s surface, increasing water repellency, all of it.”

But can that a sharp-eyed buyer even spot that?

Lawson again: “That’s hard to do in photos, but it’s an important question you can ask. A good sign would also be if the person still has any secondary packaging like a garment bag around. If they hung on to that, they probably paid similar attention to the garment.”

Now things get a little more visible. “The primary wear-point on any jacket is center front zip,” says Lawson. “It’s a pretty good indicator of just how much the product has been through.” After reading the tea leaves and asking a polite question or two, make sure the zipper teeth don’t need dentures.

A Gore-Tex jacket may be guaranteed to keep you dry, but without taped seams, it’s just leaking slower. Lawson explains: “The problem we’ll see with that is if the product isn’t laundered for seasons, it builds up oil on the inside from brushing up on inner layers. The seam tape will actually stick to the membrane less effectively after that, and then, those seams will be way less adherent.”

As addendum: If the seam tape is flopping around, it’s a pretty good proxy answer for any questions asked in Step Two. Turns out regularly washing your waterproof jacket will actually make it more waterproof in the long run.

Counterintuitively, Lawson recommends looking at the wear and tear of the jacket’s forward-facing fabric last.

“We’re designing pieces with a lot of utility—function first, but fitting that into clear expectations of aesthetics, performance, and durability. For all of those, we have a clear use case in mind that we’re designing for. With products that are designed around somewhat extreme use cases, a lot of the time the individual will never take it to that point.”

“Part of what you’re evaluating is simply fabric abrasion: are visible repairs needed? How structural are they? For example, a hole in a seam-taped jacket will need technical repair. If there are repairs required, it’s important to consider how realistic they are—but we’re good at technical repair, and a number of tech providers in the US can do that type of thing as well.”

However, it’s not like Vancouver greenlights every old piece sent in for warranty repair.

“We generally try to evaluate based on overall condition. If there’s one failure point that’s clearly ahead of the rest of the jacket, it’s like, ‘oh great, that makes sense. One of these is not like the others.’ But if you see a product where the drawcords are showing tension and there’s clear wear in multiple places, then that’s just a product that’s used up. And that’s a cool place to get to, and frankly, one of the reasons we at Arc’teryx really like used markets like Grailed. That’s a way to take more products to more people across their lifecycle.”

At the same time, just because a tech jacket may not perform like it once did doesn’t mean it’s not worth resale. Aesthetically, vintage outdoor gear—the “products with stories” identified in Step One—are some of the coolest fashion pieces around.

And then there’s Veilance.

While most of the world’s Arc’teryx gear comes from the brand’s various outdoors lines, in 2009, a high fashion sub-brand, Arc’teryx Veilance, joined the mix. Yet, a high-fashion sub brand of Arc’teryx is still Arc’teryx—and for Veilance, this means a unique place in the used market.

“Veilance products are typically engineered to the same standards as the outdoors pieces,” explains Lawson. “But users generally put those garments through much lighter scenarios in their lifetime. They’re not brushing up against big conifers as you ski past them. They’re meant for much lower abrasion environments, yet still have to pass the typical abrasion tests. So as a general rule, they stand up really well over time.”

That Gore-Tex Pro Field Jacket you see listed may have only been worn from subway to office. From a durability standpoint, it was built for almost anything else.

Above the vintage come-ups or Veilance price-savings, there’s another, perhaps greater, reason to shop for your next jacket second hand: Buying used technical gear is one of the most eco-friendly ways to consume fashion.

“What we’ve seen in the life cycle assessment work is that the energy going into materials we use is where most of the resources go,” says Lawson. “The very simple logic is that the first thing we can do sustainability-wise is spread those construction impacts over a longer life cycle.”

“If we have a used product displace a new purchase, then another new purchase, that’s the single biggest leverage point. The best part is that this takes product not into a land of compromise, but into reinforcing value, of enhancing the story it’s telling over multiple users. Rather than only trying to save 10 percent on the energy intensity of fabric by yard, we can do that while finding another generation of user for the same product, and we’ve now done something that’s ten times more valuable.”