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The Evolution of Ski Fashion Over the Decades

Originally posted on Powder | By Ian Greenwood | Last updated Jun 12, 2025 4:56 PM ET

You might hear complaints that skiing today is nothing more than a fashion show, but, in reality, it’s long been that way.

From the stretch pants of the 1950s to the one-piece suits of the 1980s, skiers have, for a long time, liked to look good—and be comfortable—on the slopes. These are some highlights of skiwear’s ongoing evolution.

This piece is part of POWDER's Summer of Ski Nostalgia content series. Stay tuned in daily for more nostalgic articles, and keep an eye out for the upcoming Summer of Ski Nostalgia badge to identify future content.

You can also view all of POWDER's summer nostalgia content here.

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A skier fallen in the snow. Image dated to the 1930s or 1940s.Photo: H. Armstrong Roberts/ClassicStock/Getty Images

1910s Through the 1940s

While women in the early 1900s were less inhibited by strict dress codes of the era on the slopes, they still were, as one department store advertisement from 1913 depicted, being sold cumbersome-looking ski skirts that reached below the knees.

This wouldn’t last forever, and after the conclusion of WWI, social mores had softened some. By the mid-1920s, women were gravitating towards wearing trousers in the mountains. A prevailing outfit might include a sweater, trousers, and boots. Wool was a common material, and colors included dark blues, grays, and browns.

In 1936, Sun Valley, Idaho, billed as North America’s first destination resort, opened. That same decade, Eddie Bauer introduced the Skyliner, a quilted down jacket that provided an alternative to bulky wool outdoor clothing.

A few years later, Klaus Obermeyer, a German immigrant and ski instructor in Aspen, Colorado, set about creating skiing’s first quilted jacket because he’d grown tired of seeing his students be uncomfortable in the mountains (Obermeyer wouldn’t get paid if they got too cold and decided to cancel their lessons). His eventual contributions to ski clothing would warrant an article all its own.

Another emerging player was White Stag, a Portland, Oregon-based ski clothing manufacturer that, by the 1950s, employed thousands at its plants and was the nation’s then-largest skiwear company. Harold Hirsch, White Stag’s founder, started the company with water-resistant wool jackets but, as the fashions and technology changed, pivoted to making slimmer cut garments.

A ski couple at Palisades Tahoe (then known as Squaw Valley) in the early 1960s.Photo: Slim Aarons/Getty Images

1950s and 1960s

In the early 1950s, the ski fashion house Bogner introduced what would eventually become a slopeside sensation: stretch pants. As Roy Terrell of Sports Illustrated wrote in 1961 amidst the stretch pants takeover, “Soon everyone looked like a ski racer—as long as he was standing still—and Willy Bogner [the man behind Bogner, although his wife, Maria, deserves the credit for fashioning the pants] began to get rich.”

Men and women hopped on the trend. The pants, which included stirrups, were made with a flexible material and slid into the ski boot, became so synonymous with their label that they themselves became known as “Bogners.” These pants spawned a mass-culture interest in ski clothes, exemplified by celebrities Marilyn Monroe and Jayne Mansfield, who adopted the slopeside fashion. Today, “après-ski” is a clothing category all its own, inspiring throwback gear and modern celebrity looks detailed by Vogue.

The 1960s weren’t devoid of color or skiwear variety. Skiers cruised the slopes in several colors, like pale blue, mistletoe green, orange, burgundy, and plum, to name a few. In addition to the stretch pants, the array of clothing options included ski dresses, sweaters, and safari jackets.

1970s

The 1970s is where the vast ski gear library of Bryce James began. James, a freestyle skier himself during that era and an avid collector, has a basement filled with vintage ski curios and outfits.

So what did he see when the 1970s came? The dominance of brands like Roffe, Skyr, and Obermeyer. Bogner hadn’t gone anywhere, either. Ski pants, unlike the stretch pants with stirrups of the past, began to have cuffs that wrapped around the outside of the skiers’ boots (some, dubbed “ski jeans,” included stretch denim or velour).

Roffe one-pieces were also in, at least if you were the best skier on the mountain. “You better be a badass if you’re gonna be sportin’ that,” said James of wearing onesies in the 70s, comparing the style to the iconic suit Uma Thurman wore in Kill Bill.

The year 1970 also saw the first of many patents involving a technology that would later become synonymous with skiing: expanded polytetrafluoroethylene, or ePTFE. For those who aren’t material scientists, that’s the polymer that made historical Gore-Tex fabrics breathable and waterproof. In 1977, the first products using the fabric made by the Seattle-based company Early Winters were manufactured, but according to James, back then, Gore-Tex outerwear would mostly see use by mountaineers.

Another, less likely synthetic fabric, Neoprene, was used on the slopes by the freestyle crowd in the 1970s, too, and, as James recalls, was about as good at thermoregulation as you’d expect. “I don't know if [you’d be] more wet on the inside or the outside after a day of skiing hard,” he said, laughing. Still, the wetsuit material kept him warm and toasty. Perhaps more so than anything else, slim silhouettes defined the era, and Neoprene is nothing if not snug.

Princess Diana and Prince Charles hit the slopes in 1986.Photo: Tim Graham Photo Library/Getty Images

1980s

Onesies would become synonymous with 1980s ski style, as evidenced by one trip Princess Diana made to Klosters, Switzerland, in 1986. She wore a red onesie from HEAD, accompanied by a stylish headband. Her ski partner (Prince Charles, of course) had a onesie on, too, but in a more reserved navy blue.

The 1986 ski film Fire and Ice further demonstrated the grip the fartbag had on skiing, and included some truly epic footage. The movie would later inspire a Bogner fashion line of the same name in 1989.

With the arrival of Gore-Tex the decade prior, additional lightweight, breathable fabrics were continuing to come online, like Nikwax Analogy, Polartec, and Sympatex. Bold prints and bright colors were still all the rage, but the sleek, technical looks of brands like The North Face were available, too. In 1985, The North Face released the Mountain Jacket and Pants, which included Gore-Tex and the now-iconic black shoulder pauldrons.

By the end of the decade, skiwear had continued to advance in engineering and design, with zippers for ventilation, scuff shields to protect the insides of pants from ski edges, and layered insulation systems that zipped into and out of jackets.

Unsurprisingly, that came with a cost, and the influx of outerwear technology elevated what you might pay for something designed to protect you from the elements.

Professional snowboarder Jim Rippey goes airborne in 1997—it's easy to see why snowboarding had a monopoly on the "cool factor."Photo: Harry How /Allsport/Getty Images

The Future of Ski Fashion?

Then came snowboarding. Once the edgy younger sibling of skiing, the sport eventually exerted an outsize influence on two-planking through the 1990s, the early aughts, and beyond.

Snowboarders brought halfpipes and baggy outerwear to the mountains, and it wasn’t long before skiers would catch on. While the general skiing public may have stuck with more traditional ski clothes, younger skiers involved in the sport’s newschool revolution would don the largest coats and pants they could find, oftentimes showing a fondness for oversized T-shirts.

Things have, for the most part, slimmed down since then, but the ski fashion of today is still wildly diverse. Much of the freeride crowd sports crinkly, well-fitting technical outerwear in muted colors, but brighter and wilder stuff might be making a comeback.

As James, the collector, has observed, numerous brands are harkening back to the past. One Google search for “retro ski suit” will deliver countless results from contemporary brands like Tipsy Elves, Shinesty, and, on the higher end, Half Days.

Fashion is cyclical, and companies are, of course, always looking for a way to cash in on new (or old) trends. But to James, throwing on a playful outfit from a different era can be deeper, acting as a form of liberation. Sometimes, to help his more reserved dinner party guests relax and have fun, he has everyone put on a smoking jacket.

The strategy has worked out and, in at least one case, resulted in a once-awkward attendee dancing around with his shirt off at the end of the night. That concept isn’t dissimilar to the spring skiers who wear the silliest thing they can find in their closet and spend a few hours getting wild under the sun for closing day. After all, clothes can change how you feel.

“A guy in an alter ego can get out of his story of himself, and now he gets to be somebody else for a period of time,” James said.

This piece is part of POWDER's Summer of Ski Nostalgia content series. Stay tuned in daily for more nostalgic articles, and keep an eye out for the upcoming Summer of Ski Nostalgia badge to identify future content.

You can also view all of POWDER's summer nostalgia content here.

Want to keep up with the best stories and photos in skiing? Subscribe to the new Powder To The People newsletter for weekly updates.