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Recently, my best friend declined my invitation to a weekend movie. She had three pairs of skis and snowshoes in her trunk and was ready to go skiing. She pulled out a pair of ski goggles from her Dior bag and asked me to guess the price. I hazarded a guess of over 1000 dollars, and she gave me a look and said that it was a good deal. I hoped my smile didn't dampen her excitement.
Chanel Coco Neige goggles
In 1957, Swiss ski enthusiast Fred Piccard said, "A girl is sexier in a ski suit than in a swimming costume." To capitalize on this trend, Fred moved to Sun Valley, Idaho, the first ski resort in the United States, to open a ski clothing shop. It was a hit with Hollywood stars such as Clark Gable, Ingrid Bergman, and Norma Shearer.
Fred also sold skiwear to the US Olympic women's ski team and Nordic jumpers to young college students. He used to say, "How radiant a pretty girl looks with rosy cheeks and sparkling eyes when she's getting a healthy dose of outdoor exercise at -10 degrees Celsius." Today's Freds don't need to waste words like that.
The words "what's new for the season" are enough to make people swoon. The latest collections revolve around girls enjoying the extreme snowy scenery in clothing that is both seductive and protective. Prada has revived the Linea Rossa collection, which combines sport and street, with a highly waterproof, windproof, and breathable three-layer bonded polyester rash jacket, in keeping with the current sporty trend.
Prada Linea Rossa Collection
Prada Linea Rossa Collection Louis Vuitton continues to introduce new ski accessories, including functional fibreglass skis and, for the first time, the LV SKI snow boots with Bluetooth heating in addition to the aged leather trim. The "Dior Oblique" and "Dior Star" logos make the Dior Alps the most recognisable skiwear.
Dior Alps Collection
These successive products created for skiing extend all the way to goggles and helmets, water cups and water bags. Some of the co-branded capsule collections are suitable for skiing scenarios as well as for everyday wear. Since when have luxury and skiing become so intertwined? In 2016, designer Demna Gvasalia's debut show at the House of Paris opened with an oversized red down jacket, and since then wide cuts, exaggerated accessories and deconstructed evening wear have taken centre stage. The jacket created quite a stir and was immediately coveted by street style celebrities. Skiwear is emerging as a broader trend. Watching the Demna show, Alexander Fury, then chief fashion critic for T magazine, said, "Women are realistic and want to keep warm and wear couture at the same time, so brands that can combine street style with classic skiwear that is also rooted in haute couture are smart." With his interpretation, the performance jacket is no longer confined to the ski slopes, but incorporates the spirit of the times.
Products created for skiing extend to helmets and snow battles
It's not just Parisienne, brands such as Raf Simons and Stella McCartney have also added down jackets, ski-backed trousers and snow boots to their product line-ups five years ago, and brands such as Fendi and Neil Barrett have launched full ski fashion collections. They are naturally looking at the potential customers in the sport. Rare venues, specialist equipment and high levels of difficulty have always made skiing seem "not so friendly", so it is no wonder that it is included in the category of "aristocratic sports" along with golf and equestrianism. In European high society, from the Queen of England to Princess Diana, to William and Kate's family are all fans of skiing.
Fashion and skiing are inextricably linked
Just as bronzed skin means regular holiday time in the summer to enjoy the sun, the 'added attribute' of skiing was not obvious at the time of its inception. A recreational sport pioneered by the Norwegians in the mid-19th century, skiing was once derided by the local population as "board jumpers" when it was introduced to the Alps. Skiers, on the other hand, thought it was "cool" that they were refining a sport that was a profound return to nature in the mechanical age. They camped in remote areas of the Alps for weeks or months at a time. It wasn't until lifts and lifts became popular on the snowy mountains in the 1920s and 1930s that skiing really hit its stride. The integrated model of transport, accommodation and entertainment made the Alps, long regarded as a waste of space, an engine of economic development. After Europe's economic recovery from the Second World War, leisure time was no longer a luxury but a basic right of citizens, with most Western European countries legislating a minimum number of annual leave days. Tourists consume goods and services as well as places. 1963 film 'Enigma' opens with Audrey Hepburn wearing Givenchy chocolate brown tights and large sunglasses, drinking coffee on a terrace in the French ski resort of Mergevaux.
Stills from 'Charade'
Ski resorts have always been the perfect canvas for the dramatic clash of fashion. While the sport requires a whole separate wardrobe to house those high-performance clothes and equipment, the snowy peaks of Switzerland, France and Italy provide a reason for jet-setters to 'go far away'. They relax in resorts such as Davos, surrounded by luxury options from Michelin-starred restaurants to designer clothing shops. As the American author Hunter Stockton Thompson wrote in describing the rise of sports stars, the post-war global boom "created a fashionable middle class with plenty of time on its hands". The star Hunt was referring to was the French athlete Jean-Claude Killy, who rose to fame at the 1968 Winter Olympics in Grenoble, France, with a landslide in three disciplines of alpine skiing. The episode of James Bond defeating his pursuers on a snowy mountain in 007's The Queen's Secret Service (1969) was staged at the height of Keeley's status as a global icon, and the over-recognition of all aspects of popular culture made the sport of skiing even more revered by the public.
Stills from 'On Her Majesty's Secret Service'
However, as Hunt said of Keeley, when a name becomes a bestseller in a wildly inflated cultural economy, it is devoured like a hot dog and given credit at the same rate. Skiing then began to slide from the aristocracy to the middle class, becoming the holiday of choice for the "leisure class". Thanks to the link between sport, tourism and popular culture, skiing is not only a suitable recreation for demonstrating spending power, it is also more addictive. Ernest Hemingway once described in The Snows of Kilimanjaro: "With heavy skis on their shoulders, they walked up the pine covered steep hills beside the sleek, urine-yellow riverside path worn by sledges. It was there that they slid all the way down the long slope of the glacier above the Madeleine, the snow looking smooth as frosting on a cake, light as powder, and he remembered sliding silently and so fast that it made you look like a bird of prey falling from the sky." A bird of prey falling from the sky is exactly what you feel when you are sliding down a snowfield at high speed. Your brain in a weightless state rushes to secrete endorphins, dopamine and other substances to make you happy.
Stills from 'Steep'
It's hard not to be interested in such an "expensive" and sustainable leisure sport. No wonder Chanel has opened a flash shop in the famous French ski resort of Courchevel for 10 years in a row since 2009, and in 2018 launched its winter sports collection Coco Neige, which is being interpreted by Korean singer Kim Ji-nee in a new season's design that is a bit of a party straight off the piste.
Korean singer Kim Ji Ni performs Coco Neige
The process of "breaking the circle" of fashion and skiing is mutual. Luxury brands from outside the circle try to enter and specialist brands from inside try to escape. Last winter, the fashion search engine Lyst published a list of the world's most popular fashion brands and items, with Gucci remaining at the top of the fashion brands list, with House of Paris moving up to number two and Moncler moving up ten places to number three.
Moncler, which is known for its down jackets and ski jackets, has continued to gain exposure in recent years thanks to a series of Moncler Genius projects with well-known designers, which have not only received round after round of praise on social media platforms, but also record sales. The fact that it has squeezed into the top three of a list of traditional luxury brands is testament to the rise of a new force.
DESCENTE X ATOMIC co-branded ski collection
The recently launched Arc'teryx and Jil Sander+ collection once again reaches out to the outdoor-loving fashion community with precision. The British photographer Nikki McClarron's shoot, set in the snowy mountains of Zermatt, Switzerland, aims the camera at the snowy mountains and the people in them, blending nature with a human attitude. The trend towards functional design fashion is irreversible and is not limited to one sporting category, but is a vibrant gesture about the outdoors. Perhaps, as Remo Ruffini, Chairman and CEO of Moncler, says, a new kind of luxury is emerging, somewhere between Hermes and Nike.
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