Important-- when they say "cotton" in the article they're talking about gabardine cotton as a water repellent layer.

Neither one of these dudes is wearing cotton base layers, midlayers, socks, etc. It's too slow to evaporate moisture which can cause blisters on feet and rapid drop of body temperature drop in cool/cold weather.

If I look at the Wikipedia article for gabardine, it's supposed to be tightly woven wool, which makes more sense to me since the exterior of the fibers are supposed to be hydrophobic. Kind of confused at the existence of gabardine made of cotton which is hydrophilic... Polyester seems like it would be cheaper and more effective... Maybe in the past it was the economical choice, but cotton gabardine is still sold today. Seems like the worst material choice for gabardine of today, but maybe I'm wrong.