Fashioned For A Banner Year

Winter sport—and fashion—never looked forward to a better year. The gay crowds dotting the once-remote High Sierras (see page 74) and the heady anticipation of the Winter Olympics have inspired such top American designers as Bonnie Cashin and Arnold Scaasi to turn their talents to ski fashions. It has caused stores as far removed from a ski lift as Neiman-Marcus to put in ski departments. The country's leading manufacturer of ski clothes, White Stag, with a line twice the size of last year's, has doubled its ski business. Importers of European sweaters, pants and boots have a daily airlift flying into Idlewild. This week the first Winter Sports Show at the New York Coliseum is giving impatient skiers a chance to examine new equipment (see page 102), check the new resorts and watch a demonstration of the shortswing on an indoor hill covered with ersatz snow. They are also getting a firsthand look at all of the clothes on these pages in a three-times-daily fashion show.

Here is a collection of the best they are seeing. Photographed in Squaw Valley, these clothes show, among other trends, colors completely new to the sport this year (see opposite page)—rusty browns, for instance, that are inspired by the California redwood used by many Squaw Valley home owners, and the vivid blues and greens used in the Squaw Valley Lodge. Shown, too, on the following pages, is a new group of ski-watching clothes for Olympic travelers designed especially for SPORTS ILLUSTRATED by Bonnie Cashin; "fast clothes" with the look of the hot-shot downhiller, borrowed from the racers; ingenious new designs for keeping warm while standing out of doors in zero weather; and elegant after-ski furs and glitter for a glittering season.

These pages show that skiers, who once wore nothing more inspiring than duffel coats and black from head to toe, now take honors as the best-dressed men and women in sport.

The exuberant skiers at Squaw Valley wear the colors of the California redwood dominating the mountain slopes behind them. Lee Baker, wearing a black nylon parka with rust-lined hood ($16), fiddles with Zenith's 1000-D round-the-world transistor radio ($275, Abercrombie & Filch). Sophie Baker's parka reverses from cotton jacquard to rust nylon ($26) and is worn over orange cable-knit sweater ($25). Suzy Ruel wears a cable-quilted nylon parka lined in white nylon with a hidden hood ($20). Her fast helmet is of Orion ($3). Jubilant John Marion's parka is iridescent brown nylon ($17), and Carolyn Carpenter's is tricolor poplin ($17). All wear the new Skilastic stretch pants ($40, all White Stag. All at Bon Marche, Seattle; Halle Bros., Cleveland; Joseph Horne, Pittsburgh; Macy's San Francisco; Ski Den, Minneapolis. Men's clothes also at Bloomingdale's; women's at Lord & Taylor). Jim Lichtlider has an argyle-patterned wool-and-mohair pullover ($17, Jantzen: Broadstreet's, New York) and a new color: bronze stretch pants ($45, Roffe, Viking Sports Center, San Francisco; Yale Co-op, New Haven).

The blues of Squaw Valley
Colors of buildings checkerboarding the slopes at Squaw Valley are repeated in the stripes of Suzy Ruel's long, belted hand-knitted sweater. Made-to-measure stretch pants match ($50 sweater, $60 pants: André Ski Shop). Velveteen belt (Elegant).

A mohair cocoon
Snugly wrapped in a unique new stadium warmth-preserver, Dolores Greer shows a Scottish blanket with leather bindings, snap fasteners and drawstrings that close it at neck and ankles ($90, Bonnie Cashin for Philip Sills). Her boots zip at sides ($16, Capezio: all, Neiman-Marcus; Roos/Atkins).

A lady in leopard
Jo Anne Brandt brings furs to the slopes with her cardigan of snow leopard and red fox ($875, Scaasi for Ben Kahn: Jenny Co.; Nan Duskin; Roberts Brothers) and shaggy boots of acrylic fiber ($14, Ulla: Saks Fifth Avenue). Sam Currey, hovering attentively, wears an Austrian jacket of shrunken wool ($30, Beconta: Aspen Sports Shop), Hathaway Viyella shirt, Reis scarf.

A picnic in the pines
Out for a musical lunch at Dr. Bernard Diamond's ski lodge are Dolores, in hand-knit pink mohair sweater ($55), suède pants ($65), and Suzy, who watches in striped mohair sweater ($55), kidskin pullover ($70), stretch pants ($60, all Bonnie Cashin: Neiman-Marcus; Roos/Atkins. Dolores' outfit is also at Saks Fifth Avenue). Guitar-playing Jim Lichtlider wears a mohair sweater ($65, Gino Paoli: at Capper & Capper; Goldwaters).

Cashin's cachet

Bright leathers and knits (left and below) are Bonnie Cashin's cachet for the coming season. A designer long admired for her practical outdoor clothes, she has concentrated for the first time on the ski spectator in an Olympic year collection for SPORTS ILLUSTRATED. At right is a casual tunic of costly fur; on pages 88 and 92 are two innovations in mohair calculated to set the sartorial pace for snow bunnies: an all-inclusive bench warmer and a pert jump suit.