Skiing has always been an act of creativity. There is a rhythm to it, a kind of poetry in motion that lives somewhere between control and surrender. At Aztech Mountain, we’ve always believed that great skiwear should capture that same balance of precision and personality, performance and art.
This winter, we are bringing that idea to life through its premiere artist-led collaboration with Matthew Day Jackson. Called Planet Aspen, it represents a new intersection between mountain performance and contemporary art for Aztech.
Jackson is known internationally for his paintings, sculptures, and mixed-media works that explore the tension between humanity and nature. His art lives in the collections of The Met, The Whitney, and the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. He is as much an adventurer as he is an artist, a skier who understands the mountain as both playground and mirror.
“Skiing is one of those rare pursuits that feels both simple and profound at the same time,” Jackson says. “On the surface, it’s just sliding downhill on snow, but anyone who’s spent time in the mountains knows it’s also about being fully present, finding joy in movement, and feeling small in the face of something bigger than ourselves.”
Those ideas became the foundation of Planet Aspen. The 23-piece collection features ten designs from Jackson integrated into Aztech Mountain’s signature silhouettes, including the Nuke Suit Jacket, Hayden 3L Jacket, and Hayden 3L Pant. Each piece fuses Jackson’s visual language with the brand’s design precision, creating garments that perform on the mountain while standing apart as wearable art.
Aztech co-founder Heifara Rutgers explains, “Matthew’s ability to capture the essence of movement, presence, and beauty aligns perfectly with how we see skiing. This collaboration isn’t just about apparel; it’s about creating something that embodies both artistic expression and mountain performance.”
Jackson describes skiing the way some people describe painting. Both are wordless forms of exploration, each turn a brushstroke, each line a statement of presence.
“When riding a chairlift or skinning up a hill, I’m struck by the quiet absurdity of what we do,” Jackson says. “Fragile beings, drawn to the edge, seeking fleeting moments of joy in places that care nothing for our presence. We pursue beauty and exhilaration in environments that demand reverence, all for a feeling that is, at its core, ineffable.”
He continues, reflecting on what it means to move through such wild spaces:
“In some moments, life itself seems to hang before us like a lure—enticing, precarious, suspended dangerously close to the indifferent hand of death. And yet, we descend with purpose, chasing elegance not for show, but because the most refined movement is the most harmonious with gravity, with terrain, with self. In those brief descents, joy becomes measurable, outpacing effort, transcending fear. It is a dance without spectators, vanishing behind us with each turn, leaving only a faint mark in the snow as testament to presence, to intention, to being.
"And in the end, this dance is not about conquest or performance, but about affirmation: a wordless declaration that we are alive, attuned, and in communion with something far greater than ourselves.”
That sense of awareness and connection—to the landscape, to the moment, to the self—is what Planet Aspen is all about. It’s skiing as art form, art as expression of movement, and the mountain as muse.
The collection is now live, debuting at 42 Hudson, our flagship store in Tribeca. And, those in Aspen can experience an installation of Jackson’s work and the Planet Aspen collection at Performance Ski, located at 614 East Durant Avenue, running through February.
To us, this is more than a collaboration. It is a reminder of why we ski: to feel alive, to find flow, and to leave just enough of a mark to know we were here.
