Industry News
It is official: we have reached the peak of designer hubris in winter sports.
Ralph Lauren, the American fashion house better known for polo shirts and preppy branding than performance sports gear, has released a pair of “Ski ’92 Graphic Decorative Skis” for a modest $1,950. There’s just one catch: they’re not actually meant to be used. The skis—and their $1,750 snowboard sibling—are entirely decorative, designed for “display purposes only.”
In other words, Ralph Lauren is selling you firewood with logos.
This isn’t the first time a designer label has dipped its lacquered toe into alpine sports. Dior, Prada, and Chanel have all released high-end ski gear in recent years. But there’s a crucial difference: those skis and snowboards were made to function. While serious skiers and boarders may laugh at the price tag, Prada’s snowboards are for example manufactured by Faction and were even used by the likes of Julia Marino in the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics (until the International Olympic Committee threatened her with disqualification unless she covered up the logo) and Chanel’s skis are manufactured by Rossignol.
Ralph Lauren, by contrast, isn’t pretending. These planks are fashion furniture. While they are made by semi-custom ski and snowboard manufacturer Polar, these planks appear to be made from solid maple and poplar wood and are not meant to be used. Sure, they look gorgeous and are heavy on nostalgia (the graphics are a nod to the brand’s ’92 winter collection), but are light on utility, and come with wall mounts, not bindings. The only “downhill” here is the trajectory of common sense.
Skis and snowboards have always been expensive, but the cost traditionally reflects years of R&D—tinkering with carbon layers, core materials, sidecut geometry, and flex profiles. A $1,000 pair of skis from a company like Atomic, Rossignol, or Blizzard might seem steep, but they’re the product of generations of alpine innovation.
Ralph Lauren is instead charging a premium for the aesthetic of performance, minus the performance itself. The design is handsome, sure—striking graphics, polished finish, luxe maple wood. But the idea that an object so deeply tied to function has been reimagined as pure ornament is, to many skiers, borderline sacrilegious.
The move is also revealing of the creeping gentrification of ski culture. Already criticized for its growing inaccessibility, the sport now has to contend with the idea that a $2,000 ski serves no purpose beyond matching your chalet décor.
The brand’s press release describes the skis and snowboard as “a bold decorative statement for any winter home.” That may be true, but when equipment becomes purely symbolic—devoid of use, divorced from sport—it raises an uncomfortable question: are we still celebrating skiing, or are we just decorating with it?
There’s a fine line between luxury and parody, and with these decorative skis, Ralph Lauren just carved a turn right over it.
