If anyone knows a great ski jacket, it's a board mirror. The professional skier has tested countless ski brands in his 18-year career spanning five Winter Olympics, six Olympic medals and 33 World Cup titles. However, in 2015, he ran in a nuclear suit jacket at Astec Mountain while training at Portillo, Chile. Astec Mountain is a ski label founded by couples Hyfara Ratgers and David Ross in Aspen, Colorado. He was stopped… well, in his truck.
“We can say it has developed to a high degree due to the connection between the founder and Aspen,” Miller said. “They obviously spent a lot of time on the mountains and understood the technical aspects of fabrics and design.”
Miller praised the jacket for better heat circulation and movement. He appreciated that proper pocket, the cuffs opened for easy gloves wear, and was undeniable.
He later met with Rutgers and Ross, where three men teamed up, and Miller served as Astec Mountain's Chief Innovation Officer in several styles, including Hayden 3L shell jackets and shell pants. He was also the face of the brand for three years.
“To this day, if not the best jackets, I think, are a very small group of the best ski jackets I've ever skied,” Miller said.
Ten years later, Astec Mountain remains aspen staples, tailored to the first person to track from the Silver Queen Gondola than the Champagne Shower at Cloud Nine Bistro. In an over-the-top grits and logo-rich category with luxury ski labels turning slopes into runways, Astec Mountain prioritizes performance and accuracy.
Instead of flashy branding, the outfit is defined in thoughtful detail: mountain-shaped zippers, streamlined silhouettes, and correct hits of neon and print. This is a label that is recognized by learning nods in the gondola, a quiet badge of insider status.
The blending of fashion and functionality at Aztech Mountain is no coincidence. Rutgers, who leads design, merchandising and creative, spent much of his career with Marc Jacobs. In 2013, he began working on a new kind of jacket from Barneys New York and recruited a team of friends and former Jacobs designers to make it happen.
“I experienced fashion at the highest level, and I was watching the growth of Moncler and Goose in Canada,” he said, along with Ross and his four-year-old daughter, liv. Rutgers said splitting time between. It is the home of the only independent store of the brand.
For Rutgers, pursuing skiwear was an obvious choice. His father moved his family to Aspen in 1974 and began teaching skiing. Rutgers grew up in ski racing and watched downhill competitions from her lunch shed at Ajax Mountain, a perch near Lucy. His favorite run is the Aztec, with the brand name. Several early Aztech styles featured vintage photographs sourced from the Aspen Historical Society.
“I always say Aspen is our muse,” Rutgers said. “This is the backbone of everything we've done so far. I love growing up there and I felt lucky to have parents in Aspen when it was really happening.”
In 2013, Rutgers presented a small collection to his family friend Lee Keating. Lee Keating owns performance skis at the Aspen Boutique along with her husband, Tom Bowers. The store became the first wholesaler to support the brand. To this day, Keating is grateful for Astec's minimalist aesthetic in a more ski style world.
“They stay in the lane,” she said. “They don't have a lot of fur in their jackets. They don't dip the jackets. There are no crystals, feathers, or extra logos. It's quiet and cool. Once you get it, you'll do it I'll get it.”
Aspen's personal stylist, Triana Trujillo loves to combine and match Aztech prints and solids. She feels that the collection is trending without feeling extreme.
“You can see many tourists coming to the mountains wearing big, crazy pieces and very sealed pants,” Trujillo said. “Locals love Astec because they tend to dress more technically.”
For those who view the slope as a personal catwalk, the ski fashion scene hasn't looked good until now. Independent labels such as Goldbergh, Cordova and Perfect Moment are carving out space for the sector along with heritage brands such as Bogner and Moncler. Even ready-made stubborns like Zegna, Brunello Cucinelli and Loro Piana have replaced city suits in their ski suits. As a result, there are more options suitable for those who choose to ski.
“If you can wear it in New York and Aspen, I always say it's a good product,” Rutgers said. For example, their women's Super Nuke Jackets have cropped silhouettes that can be worn with ski equipment and jeans and boots.
“But that's the challenge we face,” he said. “What are we? Are we fashion? Are we skis? The simple answer is that we are skis and we are true.”
Aztech's fashion campaigns can make you think otherwise. Rutgers works with fashion industry veterans like Casey Cudwarader, the artistic director of McGrawer, and Laura Zacho, former head of Marc Jacobs knitwear. Fashion stylist Jay Massacret, who collaborated with McQueen, Kenzo and Calvin Klein, styles high-concept lookbooks and social campaigns. They shoot clothes on the streets of California's empire dunes and Paris, not in mountains, but in unexpected areas. It's not something you can find in backcountry magazines.
There is also the issue of how to enlarge “aspen”. As Aztech Mountain expands into the global market, the challenges are not merely growth, but are translating into destinations immersed in their own ski traditions, while maintaining the label's clear aspen spirit. In December, the company opened its first shop shop at Hotel Alberg in Leck, Austria.
But which Asten sells it? Between influencer brigades and home prices spikes, Aspen today is far from last year in close ski towns. The unpretentious Powderseeker local spirit has given way to scenes where the lift line is lengthened. Cash cache tables were booked a few months in advance, and admission costs for families with four or one season pass were steep.
Still, for those who know where to look, the soul of the old Aspen: in the first track in Highlands, the worn-out stools of J-bar, and the subtle nods exchanged in the gondola .
“At first, I thought Aspen would be leaving for people,” Rutgers said. “If you're trying to sell at St. Moritz, Reck, or Rentzelhide, can we talk about Aspen? What we realised was that we had to lean towards it: skiing everywhere. I was lucky to have done it. Every time I return to Aspen, I think this place is really special.”
