It’s the bluebird days that tend to sneak up on me. High air pressures and high altitudes in Colorado can make for devastatingly cold air temperatures, even though it doesn’t look cold outside when you’re layering up. Those temps can exhaust the fun factor quickly.
I am not getting more tolerant of cold temperatures over time. So, the last time I faced such frigid temperatures at the resort, I pulled on Stellar Equipment’s Free Down Parka. It’s about as close to a sleeping bag as ski jackets get. I was warm and protected immediately and for the full ski day.
While Stellar’s Free Parka isn’t waterproof, it’s positioned as protective outerwear. Its shape and long cut more or less demand it. Style preferences aside, there are some major benefits of going all in on long coverage, and it turns out the Swedes are way ahead of me on this one. Cold is not something I experienced when ripping around on the resort in that jacket over the first few months of skiing in Colorado.
But can a jacket be too warm for resort skiing?
In short: Stellar wasn’t shy about tacking on a few extra baffles to the bottom of the Free Down Parka. It’s a full-on feather bunker designed for the ski resort and even the backcountry. It can also pull triple duty for more casual settings. What sets it apart from other similarly shaped jackets and parkas is its main fabric’s generous two-way stretch. That, combined with a roomy fit, provides restriction-free movement for free riders, freestylers, and everyday skiers. Don’t be surprised if you end up overheating, though — venting is not the Free Down Parka’s forte.
If you’d like to compare the Free Down Parka to other down jackets and parkas, check out GearJunkie’s guide to the Best Down Jackets.
Stellar Free Down Parka Review
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High-quality stretchy fabric adds versatility -
Very warm with excellent coverage -
Surprisingly packable for such a big parka
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No venting other than main zipper -
Not waterproof or stormproof
Haven’t heard of Stellar? I hadn’t either. The brand is just making its debut in North America. The Sweden-based brand was founded in 2015 with a vision for creating high-quality systems-based ski and alpine gear that rejects fashion cycles and gimmicky features in favor of minimalism and timelessness. The Free system is for the free-riders. It features long cuts, a relaxed fit, style-forward features, and earth tones.
The Stellar Free Down Parka is lined up as the Free system’s outerwear for the coldest days. No surprise — that’s where it thrived, given its plump down baffles and thigh-length cut. For a dedicated ski jacket, it has a uniquely long silhouette.
Fit
It’s tough to overstate just how long this jacket is. It’s a full-on two-thirds length. I’m 6’1”, and the bottom of the jacket covers most of my thighs. I had been warned — the jacket runs big, but I went with a slightly larger “large” anyway. And now I can confirm that this jacket does, in fact, run large. Sizing down to a medium would make for a more natural, less oversized fit.
There’s no getting around the fact that the aesthetic won’t work for everyone. It’s part steezy park skier, part elegant Scandinavian styling. I think the split depends on how you size it — larger for the former, downsized for the latter.
The Stellar Free Down Parka is available in both men’s and women’s versions that are similar in shape, length, and color options.
The Free Down Parka’s style is a statement. I’m not entirely sure what the statement is, but people noticed. I’ve had more folks in the lift line and at the dog park ask me about the Stellar Free than any piece of outerwear I’ve ever had. They ask about the brand they’ve never heard of, and I can tell that they’re interested in the cocoon-like warmth that I’ve been enjoying every time I step outside.
Technical Details
The main fabric is the highlight of the Free Down Parka. Stretchy high-performance insulation like this is a relatively recent phenomenon. That’s in part because stretchy fabrics can hemorrhage feathers when gaps in the fabric open and close. Stellar found a great solution. It used 86% recycled polyamide and 14% elastane in its stretch shell fabric. It’s impressively stretchy.
In practice, the two-way stretch is critical for making a jacket this long actually functional for movement-oriented activities like skiing. If it weren’t for stretch, you’d feel a tight restriction bending down, squatting, or when absorbing a big impact on skis.
The way it’s designed, I didn’t feel the jacket pulling on my back, legs, or shoulders when I was skiing fast into variable terrain that required deep squatting motions.
The stretchy 20-denier fabric isn’t all that different from Mountain Hardwear’s Stretchdown Parka’s 20D Stretchdown fabric, which is made of 86% nylon and 14% elastane. From the wearer’s perspective, nylon isn’t all that different from polyamide. It’s maybe just slightly more abrasion-resistant but less water-resistant.
The Stellar Free Parka sports six different pockets. It has two big Napoleon-style chest pockets, two hand-warmer pockets, two internal drop pockets, and a pass pocket on the left shoulder. Nothing particularly innovative, but I was glad to have options, especially the chest pockets. The long cut limited access to my pants pockets compared to a shorter jacket, especially while sitting on the chairlift.
Another interesting feature, which I didn’t end up needing with the larger size, was the hem-expanding zipper on each of the jacket’s hips. Each vertical zipper opens up about 10 inches. It reveals a gusset underneath, expanding the jacket’s hem to further prevent any restriction. It’s a thoughtful adjustment option for folks who decide to size down.
Insulation
The Stellar Free employs 750-fill down inside the baffles, which is on the high end of the down loftiness scale. Quick refresher: Down fill is measured by fill power, which is the volume of 1 ounce of the down in cubic inches. So, an ounce of the down in the Stellar Free expands to approximately 750 cubic inches. A medium Stellar Free’s 10.8 ounces of down calculates out to roughly 35 gallons of fluffy down.
The Free Down Parka’s 750-fill down is on the higher end of the quality spectrum for jackets in this category. The North Face’s less technical Nuptse Down Parka sports 700-fill down. Canada Goose’s ultra-warm Expedition Down Parka ($1,725) utilizes 625-fill power down.
At the top end of the category is 1,000-fill down, like that found in La Sportiva’s Supercouloir 1000 jacket. That quality of down is incredibly packable, but it comes with a high price tag.
The Free Dow Parka’s high-quality down is stuffed into baffles using Stellar’s I-Tube Technology. It essentially interlaces the baffle fabric into the main fabric. These are not box construction baffles, which are even warmer. They’re closer in shape to sewn-through baffles, but the I-Tube layout allows Stellar to forgo puncturing the main fabric to keep feathers in place, enable stretch, and retain some additional heat and wind resistance.
The warmest jacket I’ve taken out into the cold is the North Face Pumori Down Parka. It’s an 800-fill, box-construction, Denali-style down puffy built for belays and frigid summits. It’s also gigantic and overkill for anything you’d encounter on your typical ski mountain.
The Stellar Free Down Parka isn’t nearly as warm as that jacket. I’d call it “functionally warm.” But it’s significantly better for resort skiing based on design and durability.
Packability
The overall package of the Stellar Free is more technical than you’d expect from such a style-forward garment. The thin main fabric and 750-fill down is quite packable. It felt strange to bring such a big jacket into the backcountry, but I went for it anyway.
It was certainly bigger in my pack than my typical puffy jacket, the immensely packable La Sportiva Supercouloir 1000, but that’s a tradeoff that will make sense in some circumstances for the cocoon-like warmth and full-length coverage it offers.
I was glad to have it during a prolonged transition on a bitterly cold ridgeline in Colorado’s Gore Range. But really, it only made sense in my backcountry kit during truly frigid days.
So, while it’s far from the smallest packing puffy jacket out there, it’s packable enough to be more versatile than huge parkas like this typically are. I wouldn’t hesitate to bring this parka winter camping, for instance.
Stellar Equipment Free Down Parka: Wish List
Even as someone who runs warm, I get chilly early in the ski season when the sun is low and the air is frigid. I’m certainly not the only one. The Stellar Free had my back on those days. But there have been a few days this early season already when the sun cut through the chill, the temperatures rose, and perhaps I may have overlayered underneath my Stellar cocoon.
It was easy to overheat on those days because the main fabric was not particularly breathable.
“This is not a garment for high-pulse activities,” says Stellar’s site. “Main fabric is very tightly woven to not let out any down through the fibers. This leads to poor breathability but excellent insulation.”
The Stellar Free doesn’t have pit zips or other dedicated venting. I’m not really surprised because it’s designed for full-body warmth, not aerobic activity. I ended up needing to vent with the main zipper by either pulling the slider down or opening the jacket completely. The latter option was flappy and annoying, to say the least.
Big pit zips would expand the usable temperature range substantially. Without them, I probably won’t be skiing in the Stellar Free much past mid-February in Colorado. But I can’t rightly complain about a gigantic puffy parka like this one being too warm.
The other thing to note is that the main fabric of this jacket is not waterproof, though the shell and feathers are treated with a DWR coating. It can stand up to dry snow well, but so can just about everything else.
This is not the jacket you’d want to be wearing in a heavy, wet snowstorm. The fabric and down wet out pretty quickly, and it could get cold fast. So, skiers interested in this parka would want a backup option for those days.
Stellar Equipment Free Down Parka Review: Who Is It For?
It was tough to argue with a huge, puffy jacket when the temperatures started plummeting in November. I wore the Stellar Free Down Parka all over the place and skied in it extensively. Overall, we got along well.
The stretchy main fabric is what separates the Stellar Free Down Parka from others like it. It eliminates restrictions that typically hamper the versatility of jackets this long. Compared to its stretchy down-stuffed competitors like the aforementioned Mountain Hardwear Stretchdown Parka, there’s more high-quality down in those baffles to boost its warmth. Simple, streamlined features round out a well-made product.
So, who is the Stellar Free Down Parka for? If you were to take stylistic preferences out of the equation, I’d say just about anybody who skis or exists in cold temperatures would be thrilled to bundle into these down baffles in dry weather on the ski mountain or off. But let me reiterate that this jacket is distinctly long and runs big for the size. That aesthetic won’t jive for everyone.
Folks that dig the style, and especially those who run cold, will match well with the Stellar Free Down Parka at the ski resort, around town, or burrowed in a snow cave.
