Fashion Mogul #10: Street Skiing as Punk

This recurring column has discussed high fashion at length, often touching on street style and everyday style as implications of high fashion’s wide reach. The reality is that high fashion influences most facets of fashion we interact with on a day-to-day basis, even if most of us would never consider wearing a dress made from stuffed animals (which Vogue insists is on trend right now, apparently).

However, today’s column inspects the other side of that equation: the opposite of high fashion, if you will. Suburban fashion and youth culture often go hand in hand, but they are not considered highbrow or en vogue the same way couture houses and designer names lend themselves to their own creations. Perhaps, there exists a touch of classism here, but that is a topic for another day.

What we are examining, specifically, is street skiing’s fashion, and the larger umbrella of DIY skiing style. I have touched on my interest in street skiing edits before. What drew me to them was my position as a surfer. I was spending lots of time (and very little money) trying to score. I was camping, checking forecasts, killing time with friends. I related to the concept of skiing as a way to get together with friends, hang out in parking lots, drive around in a van, have fun no matter the cost, and have a unique, rebellious style to show for it. I suppose it is also like skating in that way, which, again, is closely tied to surfing and, to a lesser extent, skiing.

One of these groups of street skiers calls themselves “ child labor ”. Like many youth subcultures (and I understand that by referring to street skiers as “youth” I am very much alienating myself, but such is the nature of being a writer) half of the goal is to raise eyebrows. Edgy marketing for a pair of skis put out by Vishnu. Watch below.

Corporate ski companies can attempt to provide—and sell—shock value by putting middle-fingers-up art on their topsheets, but they will never succeed as well as a group of teenage boys driving around, waxing up rails of malls or schools, and winding up bungees to hit the spots they just shoveled out. Plus, all of these activities are then filmed and edited to music from artists like Chief Keef and Bjork. Often, the music is even more obscure than that. Watch (and listen) below.

Where does fashion come into this? Well, it already has: fashion is, in its simplest form, a visual form of self-expression. Street skiing relies even more heavily on self-expression because it is not as neatly judged as racing or even traditional park skiing. Finding features in the rough, having the guts to go for strange wins (like skiing off a second-story building onto a man-made snow ramp) and being funny are all winning components of being a street skier.

Many street skiers even end up forming their own lines of clothing, ski brands, and designing their own skis that are specifically made for street skiing.

In a lot of ways, street skiing is skiing’s punk subculture . It is anti-establishment, (many clips involve groups of kids running away from, or joking around with, law enforcement), anti-corporation and anti-consumerist (the outfits and skis are often thrifted, hand-me-down, or battered to the point of barely being salvageable), and it is very much DIY. From the shoveling that takes place at the start of every street ski edit to the clothing that often accompanies successful street skiing groups, many aspects of this subculture are made by the people directly involved.

Once these skiers get signed to larger brands or film parts in “bigger” ski movies, some of this pure, youthful rebellion is lost. That is the way of the world, and we see that pattern hold true in most creative sports, the music industry, and, yes, the fashion industry as well.

Just like the punks influenced fashion and are now, ultimately, part of the mainstream as people today embrace leather jackets, doc martens, and ripped jeans, some of street skiing’s rebellion will continue to exist even if, one day, it becomes wholeheartedly mainstream.

Related: Fashion Mogul #9: Hipsters, and a Brief Theory on the Function of Style

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