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When you think of mesh shirts and fishnet stockings, you might picture a goth, punk, or other brands of night club fashion. Most wouldn’t associate fishnet garments with hiking, skiing, or dogsledding.

But as Michael Kristy from The Iron Snail Clothing Co. explains, fishnets are the underwear of choice for many. In particular, Norwegians who want to enjoy the great outdoors in all temperatures wear them. It may seem counterintuitive to wear something holey to stay warm, but there’s a reason it works better than most base layers.

Kristy explains that Norwegians have been wearing fishnets under their clothes for over 100 years. And they’re not the only ones. The first people who summited Mt. Everest wore a fishnet layer under their clothing to stay warm.

Mesh undergarments were popular around the 1950s, but they weren’t called fishnets. They were called “health vests” or “string vests” and they were touted as being “recommended by medical professionals.”

What’s the big deal with mesh? It’s all about the air layer it creates. Wearing it under clothing serves as both an insulating layer and a moisture wicking layer.

“It really helps regulate your overall body temperature and makes you feel a lot more comfortable when you don’t have wet, clammy clothes sticking to you at all times,” says Kristy.

The Norwegian company Brynje manufactures mesh under layers and claims they are four to six times warmer than other base layers.

So under other clothing, the fishnet fabric keeps you warmer. But conversely, if you get too hot, stripping down to only the mesh layer will quickly cool you down.

In addition to plenty of punk/goth approvals, the comments included corroboration from Norwegians and others who have first-hand experience with the magic of mesh base layers:

“Norwegian here, and proud wearer of «netting» as we call it in the military!”

“Can confirm, most Norwegians (and neighbours) that do outdoors stuff use ullnetting/woolnet. It’s basically a cheatcode for staying warm, so I have a ton of these. The words fishnets or health/stringvests is never used. You can find very old farmers that use the word healthvest/helsetrøye, mostly people just call them ullnetting or netting if talking to outdoors people.”

“I’m a veteran. I did training with the Norwegian army on a base north of Norway. I had so many layers and was constantly freezing my ass off. I noticed the Norwegian army guys had these fishnets as their first layer. And asked em why they all had that. He told me it was to keep them warm. Luckily i have not been in that kind of cold since. But getting those fishnet layers has been on my mind since.”

“Our guide on a glacier tour in Norway had these and told me about them, so I decided to give them a go for a recent vacation to go figure skating on wild ice in northern Sweden. I wore these nets under a merino wool baselayer and a thick Norwegian wool sweater (plus an outer synthetic hard shell to keep out the wind) and it was fantastic. Spent all day outdoors at -20°C combining intense workouts with picnic breaks and never got cold thanks to my base layer always being dry. 11/10 would recommend, I haven’t shut up about these since then.”

“Yeah, it’s absolutely true too. I’m an avid outdoorsmen, so I’ve watched lots of tests on this. Fishnets outperform even the best wool base layers in absolutely every single category except for odor. Unless we’re talking niche applications there’s nothing better than the fishnets.”

“I’ve been wearing mesh shirts under my normal clothes for about a year now—and without knowing this was exactly what they were used for, I found it helped me keep cool in the summer and warm in the winter. Imagine my surprise when this video teaches me I’ve been continuing a longstanding Norwegian tradition as a necessity for working in a warehouse (and for punk fashion lol).”

With as many advancements as we’ve made, sometimes the traditional methods still work best.

You can follow The Iron Snail on YouTube for more fun clothing facts.