Wherever you choose to wear yours, we’ve got 17 of the absolute best on the market for your shopping pleasure. Carve on, dude.
The Best Overall Ski Jacket
Long before TikTokers began wearing their jackets in the shower, Arc’teryx earned a cult-like following (and a spot on GQ’s Quality List) for the advanced functionality and uncompromising quality of its outdoors gear. The Rush jacket is an exemplar of that performance-minded excellence, slickly engineered with a windproof and waterproof Gore-Tex shell, taped seams, heat-sealed zippers, pit zips for ventilation, a helmet-compatible hood, a powder skirt, and on and on and on.
In addition to the virtually weatherpoof shell above, Arc’teryx also makes an insulated version which uses toasty CoreLoft material to keep you thawed and thriving. It’s a better jacket for the moments in-between carving powder—its shell is still windproof, but merely water-repellant—but it can certainly whizz through some lighter skiing, too. If you’re hoping to conquer a black diamond and look damn good doing it, either version will serve you very well.
The Best Budget Ski Jacket
Let’s not kid ourselves—skiing ain’t cheap. You’ve got skis, helmets, gloves, and ski passes, not to mention all the gas it takes to drive to the slopes. And then there’s all the après-ski activities! So why not save dough where you can? Penny-pinching doesn’t automatically mean you’re sacrificing on performance or style, thankfully. Enter L.L.Bean and it’s nifty 3-in-1 Trail Model jacket. It comes in at under $250, and—unlike the unholy shampoo-conditioner-body wash trinity—it’s actually the triple threat you’re looking for: the shell is completely waterproof and comes in a quartet of solid colors, the removable insulated jacket is fortified with Primaloft warmth, and you can wear them separately or combine them together and become the Megazord of the mountain.
The Best Adaptable Ski Jacket
Given the way the environment has been trending, knowing exactly how much to layer up for a day on the slopes can be…tricky. That’s where this three-in-one jacket comes in. It’s comprised of a weatherproof outer shell to protect you from the elements and a toasty detachable insulated layer that can be worn in tandem or separately, giving you a ton of flexibility in varying conditions. So when winter is really wintering, or if the conditions are way milder than you expected, you’ll be glad to know that you can just bring one jacket to handle whatever comes your way. It also comes in a vibrant range of colors to help you brighten up even the bleakest winter days.
The Best Capital-D Designer Ski Jacket
Moncler makes some of the most luxurious outerwear around, and any of the jackets in its catalog will shout that from the chairlift. But for those of you who consider flexing to be as much of a sport as activities that require that chairlift, its fashion-forward Moncler Genius line sits at the center of that frigid Venn diagram. The Genius label is Moncler’s playground for collaboration, where it taps select designers to create absolute showstoppers—like this featherweight, warm-as-hell puffer made with Hiroshi Fujiwara’s legendary streetwear imprint, Fragment Design. Unless you rip, you probably don’t want to take a chance wearing this to go skiing (it’s entirely unclear how this would handle the friction of a prolonged penguin slide), but then again, if you’ve got the cash to attach a lift ticket to this jacket, going full send in the FRGMT might not be taking much of a chance.
The Best Eco-Minded Ski Jacket
Picture Organic cares as much about sustainability as they do the slopes. Their Goods insulated jacket hits all the requisite ski jacket marks: underarm vents, generous chest pockets, pass pocket, an attached goggles cleaner, and adjustable hood, hems, and cuffs. But where it gets really sweet is the hardshell itself which uses a combination of recycled polyester and bio-sourced polyester made from repurposed sugarcane waste. The material is then combined into a breathable yet waterproof two-layer fabric and then coated with an eco-friendly, PFC-free DWR coating to make sure you stay drip-dry all day long. On top of that, the cozy insulation is made from recycled synthetic down material. Mother Earth is proud.
The Ski Jacket Resort Employees Swear By
For the real heads out there, 686 is well-known territory. For those who need a quick download, just know it’s one of those brands that resort employees wear on the mountain when they don’t have to wear their resort-issued uniforms. In other words, it might be commercially ignored on some level, but critically adored. (And by “critically,” we mean “those who spend the majority of their waking winter hours on a mountain”). 686 is churning out some of the most technical, hardest-working, forward-thinking jackets anywhere, with this Gore-Tex Pro 3L Thermagraph Jacket leading the charge. It has body-mapped Polartec Alpha insulation on the inside—providing regulated warmth, legitimate breathability, and next-level moisture management—the most rugged Gore-Tex fabric on the market on the outside, triple-layer taped seams, a powder skirt to keep out snow on days that you’re lucky enough to need one and (literally) 20 other listed features that all actually do something, which means that you’ll be discovering them for years. Do you need them all? Who knows what the future holds.
The Best Spring Ski Jacket
In the hierarchy of Ski Jackets, the Spring Ski Jacket holds the lowest spot, and understandably so: most of the time, winter sports are best enjoyed in the, uh, winter. But spring skiing is its own special kind of joy. You could do it in a hoodie, but snow is still wet, wind can still bite, and pockets are still nice. What makes a good spring jacket? Some good ventilation, zero bulk, limited-to-zero insulation, and some adaptability, in case the weather gets weird. Other than that, it’s kind of a dealer’s choice, and few dealers make better choices than Armada, with this anorak. Fully-loaded with low-pro features like lycra wrist gaiters, an adjustable powder skirt, a taffeta-lined back and a pit-to-hem side-zipper for easy entry, you’ll be trying to find ways to wear this one even when the weather is telling you to break out the heavy hitter.
Plus 9 More Ski Jackets to Shred In
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