Marmot's New Collection; What Happens at Aspen Fashion Week?

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Some of you might be wondering: What happens at Aspen Fashion Week anyway? If your guess was that designers come to Aspen Fashion Week to show their sports, ski, and outerwear collections, bingo! You'd be right.

It's easy to pish-posh an outerwear-oriented fashion week—it's not Paris haute couture, after all—but we're really into it because, here, everything on the runway is 100% buyable and easily wearable. In fact, these clothes are more than wearable—they have practical purpose: protection from the elements, safety, efficiency, performance-enhancement. Of course, the audience's enthusiasm can't be beat, either—by and large, most of the people attending Aspen fashion week are avid skiers, snowboarders, outdoors-people, and sports enthusiasts. After a brand's show, it's common to find their brick-and-mortar store in town swarming with customers.

We also love that the fashion shows take place outdoors, under this technicolor blue sky, at the foot of Aspen Mountain. It drives home the point about these being sport-driven clothing—skiers zoom up the lift and down the mountain while the music blares and models showcase the clothes on the catwalk. It's pretty awesome and sort of surreal.

There's more to Aspen Fashion Week shows than meets the eye too. Getting up-close and personal with dozens of major outdoor brands means learning about high-tech fabrics, innovative ideas for garment design, and meeting brilliant innovators with great back stories.

As the week rounds out, we'll be featuring some cool designers we've seen here and give you a round-up of the biggest up-and-coming trends in designer skiwear. In the meantime, have a look at the Marmot collection (above). See you on the slopes!
· Aspen Fashion Week [Official Site]
· Marmot [Official Site]
· All Aspen Coverage [Racked]