For some reason, ski gear has largely escaped the scrutiny applied to the rest of the fashion world when it comes to sustainability. Think about it. Ski jackets and salopettes get bought, worn hard for a week in the Alps or on the Mount Hutt snow, and rarely ever get questioned.
The fact that most of it is built from petrochemical fabrics that will outlast the people wearing them has simply been the price of keeping dry and warm.
Well, Aussie menswear atelier M.J. Bale has decided it’s going to do something about it, and the answer lies somewhere within a 6,500-hectare property in New Zealand's Southern Alps.
Lake Hāwea Station, a family-run regenerative farm and luxury accommodation in Otago's Southern Alps, is home to approximately 10,000 Merino sheep that graze above 1,500 metres, producing wool that is ultra-fine, fully traceable, and grown on land that currently sequesters two and a half times more carbon than it emits.
Since purchasing the property in 2018, the station's owners, Geoff and Justine Ross, have planted 30,000 native trees, fenced off seven kilometres of lakefront, and established pastures that now support over 300 species – among them the kārearea, New Zealand's critically endangered native falcon. It is a farm that is actively repairing the landscape it occupies.
That wool becomes Alpine-Active, M.J. Bale's new technical skiwear collection. The outer shell fabric is woven by Reda in Biella – a mill with roots in Piedmont going back to 1885 – and the finished jacket and pants are manufactured by JAAM Italia, a Trentino-based house that has outfitted Italy's national ski instructor associations for fourteen consecutive years.
The contemporary collection, M.J. Bale says, combines the technical credentials of Italy’s finest alpine manufacturers with the inherent quality of New Zealand’s most prominent exports. This is a collection built to perform because it’s sustainable, not despite it.
It's worth noting what kind of company is making this bet. M.J. Bale posted a 23% jump in net profit last financial year, crossing $103 million in total sales. It seems that, while peers have been retreating from physical retail, M.J. Bale has been extending leases and backing the in-store experience, doubling down on quality – and has been rewarded for it.
It’s the same thinking that’s been applied to its latest collection. Of course, the overarching premise is rather simple: that the best possible material for the mountain might also be the most responsible one.
Merino is renewable, biodegradable, and naturally thermoregulating. It doesn't shed microplastics into the snowmelt. And when it comes from a place like Lake Hāwea – certified carbon zero, B Corp-accredited, genuinely regenerative – the supply chain becomes part of the product rather than a footnote to it.
This whole time, we all thought that premium and sustainable were two mutually exclusive qualities. M.J. Bale just challenged the rest of fashion to take a different run at it.
