Icebreaker Launches Product Modelled on Snowshoe Tracks

New Zealand-based clothing designer Icebreaker is collaborating with British artist Simon Beck to launch the brand’s new “The Art of Nature” product series, an ongoing, annual collaboration with artists who use objects found in nature in their work, Women’s Wear Daily reports.

For its first time out, Icebreaker is producing 20 garments with designs modelled after what Beck has created by snowshoeing in the Alps.

One of the inspirations for his designs for Icebreaker, a gigantic ram’s horn, took Beck eight hours to trace in the snow on the frozen Bachalpsee Lake in Switzerland. Icebreaker will post a two-minute video of how he created that this spring.

To create his art, Beck sketches a design and sets off outdoors with a four-season tent, a pair of snowshoes, an orienteering compass, protractor, bearings and layers of Icebreaker merino pieces among other necessities in order to wait out his ideal weather conditions – a fresh snowfall and no wind.

Icebreaker will donate $1 from each purchase of the Beck-inspired merino wool pieces to the nonprofit Protect Our Winters dedicated to encouraging the winter sports community to fight against climate change.

Original article by Rosemary Feitelberg, Women’s Wear Daily, January 22, 2014.

Photo courtesy Icebreaker.