As many media outlets reported last season, the hottest seasonal outerwear wasn’t the latest three-layer, taped-seam, waterproof-breathable shell or even a rechargeable avy pack. It was the vintage onesie, thanks to one intrepid gear rental company’s vision to lend them on-demand.
It was a great gimmick and just plain fun. But this year, a number of companies, smelling opportunity, have started reissuing them, from the cheap and garish, to the modestly-er priced (hey, what’s a grand?), all the way to oh-my-god-you’re-kidding luxe.
What started out as a marketing strategy has now become a full-on category. But before you rush to the nearest website and pay anywhere from a couple hundred to a couple thousand for a new or used onesie, consider a few points. After all, if Jurassic Park, Westworld and basically anything else written by Michael Crichton has taught us, it’s that remaking things from the past ends with you being eaten off a toilet by a T-Rex, or something of that nature.
Joking aside, there are some real consequences for following style over function, in the snowsports industry or otherwise. In the book Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion, author Elizabeth Cline wakes to the realization that she has too much clothing (sound familiar, gear junkies?). So, she begins tracing her purchases’ collective impact. Cline examines the recent practices of companies that crank out the hottest trending apparel designed to be worn briefly and then discarded. And, while she’s specifically looking at the lifestyle side, it’s not hard to see how this can easily extend to skiing, and the onesie itself.
Not even taking into account the resources it takes to create technical garments (much of which is petroleum-based), there’s the fact that while nearly all of our textile waste in the U.S. is reusable, only about 15 percent actually is. The rest? Right into the landfill. A loudly-colored throwback ski suit sounds fun, but when the seasons change, so will the trends.
There’s also a functional reason for not buying a onesie: they are notoriously less-practical than a two-piece kit. A separated top and bottom allows for infinite layering options on colder days, while segmentation breathes better in spring conditions. This makes the onesie rarely appropriate. And if it isn’t appropriate, you won’t wear it. If you won’t wear it, you’ll eventually discard it, where, odds are, it ends up in a landfill—not decomposing.
Think of it another way: Onesies are fun, just like classic cars. But anyone with a classic car knows that aesthetic rarely equals practicality.
At this point, let me be clear that this article is by no means against fun. Gaper Day is, as far as I’m concerned, every ski patriot’s duty, and crazy outfits that include the odd onesie are part of said duty. But, if you must indulge in a throwback kit, consider renting one or scouring your local mountain thrift store. Hell, even eBay can net you some solid options. Buying vintage fits squarely into the “Reuse” third of the Three Rs, which we should all know by heart. (Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, by the way.)
The fact is, how we spend our dollars matters, and not just to support the companies we love—those dollars also support larger practices that aren’t always represented by a logo. So this season, should you have the option of buying a sparkly new onesie, think twice. Dinosaurs, like re-created outerwear, are only fun until they start eating us all alive.
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