You Can Get a Piece of Outerwear History from Burton's New Archive Shop

A Nonconformist Archive

The intersection of fashion with outdoor apparel feels familiar today, but Burton was experimenting with that relationship long before performance gear became a fixture of everyday dress. In the early 2000s, Burton's sub-label Analog dug deep to define what fashion-forward outerwear could look like, taking a street-style approach to snowboarding apparel. Analog's collections and collaborations pushed into pockets of culture that existed far from the ski hill. Now it's in the Archive Shop.

Then there was Burton's 2005 collaboration with Paul Smith, which brought the British brand's style influence to blizzard-ready materials with a pinstripe snow jacket and pants. Those are in the Burton Archive Shop too. Another piece from 2008 turns Andy Warhol’s take on The Last Supper into a camo pattern for freeriders. When it was released, nobody questioned how Warhol's irreverent style aligns with the spirit of snowboarding.

That spirit traces back to the origins of the brand, which was founded in 1977 by Jake Burton Carpenter, who started his company out of a barn up in Vermont. Carpenter is credited with inventing the modern snowboard, and Burton has always held a position at the sport's forefront. Let's not forget that snowboarding was once called a “clumsy intrusion on the sleek precision of downhill skiing” by Time magazine, or that early riders faced restrictions at ski resorts (and still do at Alta, Deer Valley, and Mad River Glen). Now snowboarding is in the Olympics.

Burton has had a lot to do with that progress, and that same impulse shows up in the company's alternative patterns, experimental graphics, and gear that has been consistently inventive and always in conversation with the sport's culture. The Archive Shop, which also features snowsuits, fleece, a 1991 windbreaker with a purple and yellow design that screams '90s, and a Casio G-Shock watch, is a way to acknowledge that history and bring some of it back into play.

Circling Back to the Past

For Depop, a secondhand fashion retailer and platform where people can buy and sell secondhand apparel, the collaboration offers another opportunity to put circularity into practice. The $50.50 price ceiling makes archive pieces accessible, opening the door for a new generation to engage with vintage pieces. Mining archives for limited-edition anniversary releases is part of many brands' playbooks, but the Archive Shop touches nostalgia while avoiding new production. And it puts original pieces into new hands, leaving room for contemporary interpretations.

“These are real pieces from our archive and each one tells you something about how snowboarding looked and felt at the time," said Todd Kohlman, Burton’s resident archivist, in a press release. "Opening the archive with Depop gives a new generation the chance to connect with that history in their own way."

In the world of fast—fast laps on a pow day, but also increasingly fast consumption of apparel—perhaps the most forward move is to return to the past, shop secondhand, and give these pieces another run.

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