It’s a great week to have a disposable income and act like you know how to ski.
The North Face x Skims collab launches its second winter outerwear capsule today, again channeling ski culture with a campaign shot on the powder-coated Chilean mountains. (Skis and airfare not included.)
The 2025 drop expands on its collection from last year, with even more silhouettes, like the wrap puffer coat and a thoughtfully cropped, hooded puffer jacket with drop shoulders that brings some fashion to the line, which is aesthetically more oriented toward sport. It also includes men’s and kids’ styles for the first time (prices range from $55 to $800).
Even considering the new styles, the overall brand ID will look very familiar to Skims fans, with creative direction that’s nearly identical to last year’s North Face collaboration. It has a styling and color system approach that’s similar to the recent Skims x Nike collab, with muted color tones such as bone, kyanite, gunmetal, phoenix, and onyx, this time inspired by a winter color palette.
The campaign creative direction again utilizes graduated layouts and product imagery, featuring models in geometric groupings organized by garment colorway. (Laura Obermeyer and Jackie Nickerson shot this year’s campaign; the first iteration last year involved two campaigns, with one shot by Vanessa Beecroft and the other by Donna Trope.) Part of what makes the Skims marketing such a home run is how it plays with its brand for a distinct visual approach to each of its various campaigns for core product drops. It appears to be less flexible with collaborations.
A big week for ski fashion
But it’s not the first to drop a winter collection this week. Nike and Jacquemus expanded their long-running partnership into the winter season by announcing their first-ever ski collection last Wednesday (some styles are online now). The Nike x Jacquemus collab plays into cold-weather glamour and offers shapes that are driven less by spandex body shaping and more by a classic, retro aprés style.
The style lines and pattern of the clothes create their own shape on the body, such as in the full skirt featured on the first campaign image, or the hourglass shape emphasized by the bell sleeve and tailored waist of the ski jacket. It’s Audrey Hepburn in a chalet with the functionality of Gore-Tex. Prices range from $110 to $700 for what’s currently available online, which is half of the total 18 expected styles to be released.
These drops are an entry point for fashion brands to get in on outerwear sales by tapping into the expertise of brands already in the space (The North Face and Nike, respectively). They are also a way for winter sport amateurs to tap into ski styles without having to spend big on a vacation or premium-level gear that they don’t really need. I live at sea level, and I’d still buy that Nike x Jacquemus jacket . . . if it wasn’t sold out. And though all The North Face x Skims styles have yet to be released, the comments section on the brand announcement posts is already piping.
This quick sequence of drops is another indication that there’s appeal in prestige signaling through pieces that have preppy, sophisticated, and stylistic design elements you might see walking around Kemo Sabe in Aspen or a premium St. Moritz chalet.
It’s almost as if tenniscore and gorpcore had a winter romance. (Does that give us chaletcore?) North Face x Skims and Jacquemus x Nike have distinct perspectives on this, but one thing is clear: This winter, skiing is a state of mind.
