As skiing has changed, so have the ways that skiers dress.
The Alf Engen Ski Museum celebrated Olympic Day on Saturday with the public unveiling of three new exhibits that trace how the winter sport’s clothing styles, materials and designs have transformed over the last century.
The three exhibits — titled A Century of Ski Fashion, the Barbara Alley Simon Fashion Collection, and The Story of the U.S. Alpine Ski Team — together use fashion to offer a fresh look at the evolution of skiing.
A sweeping, snowdrift-shaped archway leads visitors through the museum’s entrance and straight into these latest shows. They map the evolution of ski apparel from the wool sweaters and Olympic uniforms of the early 1900s to fashion designs by Barbara Alley Simon and modern performance gear.
“This was a piece of the story that we had here, but it wasn’t really fully interpreted. So starting with our early outfits and how that’s changed over the years, it brings that whole story together and offers a cohesive flow through the whole world of skiing,” said Annie Bommer, executive director of the Alf Engen Ski Museum Foundation.
Timed with Olympic Day festivities at the Utah Olympic Park, the unveiling draws attention to hallmark chapters and forgotten eras of ski heritage, offering not just a history of competition, but a record of what athletes wore, how they wore it and what those choices say about the sport itself.
“This project in particular really feels like a gateway into the museum,” said Tom Kelly, chairman of the museum and longtime Olympic spokesperson. “It really feels complete.”
Inside, visitors are met with three interconnected displays that trace the evolution of ski clothing across more than a century. But bringing these fragile garments out of archival storage was no small feat. Many of the oldest pieces, especially those from the 1930s, had been carefully boxed away for years, largely because of the risks posed by light exposure, fluctuating temperatures and dust when on display.
“Textiles are one of the things that degrade the most in museums,” said Bommer. “That’s one of your first things to lose color, to lose texture, and to fall apart.”
Among the pieces now on display is a vivid blue Utah Ski Club sweater from 1931 belonging to Alf Engen, a powder skiing pioneer and influential coach who helped shape the early U.S. Ski Team. To make this display possible, the museum invested in custom-built display cases designed specifically to preserve sensitive materials. For many of these items, it’s their first time ever being shown to the public.
“We wanted to prolong the preservation of these artifacts. That’s why a lot of these things haven’t come out before,” said Bommer. “They were just being kept really safe in boxes. So these cases were specifically designed to keep dust particles out and control the temperature and humidity within the cases. And with the new technology, we’re able to bring these out.”
The exhibit moves through Olympic history, showcasing the uniforms worn by Alf and Evelyn Engen at the 1948 Winter Games in St. Moritz, with Evelyn’s uniform designed and made by herself.
“The exhibit shows how things have changed over the last 100 years of what people would wear. It’s very different, the 1930s collection. It doesn’t look quite as warm and cozy. It looks like you would probably freeze,” joked Bommer, referring to Evelyn’s handmade, cropped uniform. “It’s really fun, but also doesn’t look very warm to be wearing on the slopes.”
That spirit of self-driven design continues with more modern entries, including the speed suit and helmet worn by Park City Olympian Steven Nyman during his winning streak in 2016, both of which he co-designed with brands Spyder and POC. Beside it stands a current-season ski outfit sponsored by Stio, part of a rotating display that will be updated each year with the company’s latest designs.
“With new, updated fashion each year, this display will always stay current, and it really shows the juxtaposition of how things have really changed between then and now,” said Bommer.
At the center of the exhibit is the Barbara Alley Simon Collection, a bold, era-defining showcase of ski fashion from the 1960s through the 1990s. A former fashion editor for Skiing and Snow Country magazines, Simon was a driving force in shaping American ski style. She personally donated more than 60 complete outfits, each meticulously preserved with matching accessories and detailed instructions organized in a massive binder to ensure every look is displayed exactly as intended.
“She was the show. She was everything to ski fashion,” said Kelly.
Worn by the country’s top athletes on podiums and peaks around the world, the U.S. Ski Team jackets have become iconic symbols of national pride, elite competition and the evolution of the sport itself. The new exhibit features every official team jacket from 1996 to the present — each one personally worn and donated by Spencer Eccles, an All-American skier in the 1950s and longtime trustee of the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Foundation.
“There are very few athletes or trustees who would have kept all these jackets,” said Kelly. “Without question, he’s been the most passionate fan of the U.S. Ski Team that I’ve ever encountered. He’s been the biggest fan ever since — and still is today.”
Every item in the Spencer F. Eccles U.S. Ski Team jacket collection was carefully catalogued and dated by Kelly and museum manager Maddie Nunez, prompting Kelly to recall his own time with the U.S. Ski Team.
“This was a great opportunity to kind of walk down memory lane,” Kelly said. “I hope people come in, see a jacket, and remember when they were on the team back in the ’90s. It was also an opportunity to recount the history of the team, which can be very quickly forgotten.”
The process of inventorying each jacket to its respective era took more than a year, starting in the winter of 2023 and continuing through the following summer. To make the archive more accessible, the museum built an interactive touchscreen that features year-by-year video summaries of team milestones, many with a focus on Utah’s large role in shaping the national team.
“We had to figure out what year each jacket came from,” Kelly said. “We looked at who the sponsors were during what period. Most of these are Spyder jackets, which sponsored the team from the early ’90s up until maybe five or six years ago. So that wasn’t always a differentiator, but the sponsors helped us narrow it down.”
While each jacket recalls the wins and losses of the year, who was involved on the team, they also represent the style of the time. Eccles’ very first uniform in the collection from 1996 wasn’t a jacket at all but a one-piece. With 30 jackets to cycle through, Bommer expects to switch out the jackets on display every six months.
The Alf Engen Ski Museum is open from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily at the Utah Olympic Park.
