Fifty years ago this winter, snowboarding (at least the modern era) began when Jake Burton mailed out a typed press release announcing the formation of his Burton Board Corporation. This new corporation consisted mostly of Burton making boards by hand in a barn and selling them out of his vehicle, but it helped launch a snowsports revolution.
This week, the Burton Board Corporation — now a proper corporation with a PR agency and global distribution — sent out a press release using the Internet and a technology called email. This news bulletin announced monthly releases of 50th anniversary capsules of period apparel from each of five distinct eras in the company’s history.
The Anniversary Apparel
“Era 1” of Burton’s “Sideways Revolution” collection is available now, with a pullover jacket, pants, a beanie, and logo tees. “Retro” skiwear for a Halloween party defaults to the distinctive neon of the ’90s, but this kit is more early to mid-’80s, with a navy, white, and red color palette and an earflap beanie.
Unlike when Columbia tapped into nostalgia for its Bugaboo jackets with a limited release, Burton’s 50th anniversary apparel releases aren’t exact replicas of particular items from snowboarding’s past — Burton’s first outerwear was actually a one-piece “snowmobile suit.”
One historical inaccuracy of the kit for that decade is the baggy fit of the pants and anorak, likely a nod to what’s popular now with today’s young snowboarders. Today’s teens will also be happy to see that the jacket cinches at the waist.
Thankfully, the fabrics and waterproofing aren’t historically accurate, either. The pants and jacket use a modern three-layer waterproof-breathable membrane and taped seams. This puts the jacket and pants at a modern $314.77 each. (We assume the $0.77 is a nod to the year Jake Burton moved to Vermont and started making snowboard prototypes.)
Why This Anniversary Matters
If you’re as old as snowboarding itself, these kits might not make you look any younger, but they’ll likely have great appeal to the youngest generations of today’s riders. Anyone younger than about 40 might not remember a time when, like skateboarding at city hall, snowboarding was banned at all but a few places, but the kits might offer some education.
“Our 50th anniversary celebrates the counterculture spirit of the global riding community, the creativity and grit that got us all here and the next generation of riders taking snowboarding to a place we never imagined 50 years ago,” said Donna Carpenter, Burton Owner & Chair of the Board, in a statement.
Plenty of brands leverage nostalgia to sell clothes, but Burton Board Corporation’s history is inextricable from the history of snowboarding. The press release for these vintage capsules concedes that “snowboarding’s story has never been Burton’s alone,” but Jake Burton’s efforts to get snowboarding permitted at Stratton helped quickly move snowboarding from a fringe sport banned at most ski resorts in 1985 to an Olympic sport in 1998.
The teens and 20-somethings who buy this new throwback kit might not care about that history any more than they care about landlines and computers that didn’t connect to the Internet, but it’s still worth celebrating. It’ll be interesting to see how Burton reimagines the 1990s in its “Era 2” drop, which will release on Oct. 13.
