1000 | Haglöfs 2 - The Story

Magnus has very, very limited sewing skills. The pants still looked better than any of us expected, and they turned out to be a great starting point. Soon everyone involved had squeezed into that sewing room, and it didn't take long before ideas were flying around.

"Magnus had a very clear idea of the silhouette he wanted," says Eva Weiss, Head of Design at Haglöfs.

Alric Ljunghager, our creative director, was there too. He played a big part in the actual design choices: which colours went where and where the logos sat. I think we tried every single combination of logos in every single location on the garments.

What we were missing

By then we had been talking for a while about the pants and jacket we couldn't find anywhere. We make products for ourselves first, and this was a kit we wanted to wear.

Our dream was a contemporary, baggy pant and a shorter, boxy jacket that were actually made for the mountain. You can find plenty of cheaper pants with good fits. We just didn't think they had the materials you want once you go touring or ski the backcountry, and they didn't come as bibs either.

A lot of outerwear looks the way it does because of what it has to do, and that's fine. But we wanted the fit to matter as much as the function. Getting there meant inventing a few details that didn't exist yet. Baggy pants, for example, come with a problem when you walk in crampons. If a crampon catches the pant leg, it can get dangerous, or at the very least you rip your pants. We fixed that problem too. Haglöfs has spent decades perfecting how outerwear works in the mountains, and that's why we needed them on the other side of the table.

"To create garments together that would feel true to both Haglöfs and 1000skis," is how Madeleine Axelsson, Head of Product Development at Haglöfs, sums up the brief.

The first bib

From Magnus's pants, the work moved fast. "Magnus made a first prototype of the pants, Ulrika, our pattern maker, based her first sample on it, and from there it was fairly straightforward," says Madeleine.

We've always loved bibs. When you fall in the backcountry, or anywhere really, a bib keeps the snow out. The problem was the fit. To get the wide legs we wanted, we had spent years in bibs that were several sizes too big around the waist and chest. That gets uncomfortable and kind of defeats the purpose.

Then Ulrika Moberg, pattern maker at Haglöfs, handed me her first bib sample. It was a size made for my body, and it still had the wide legs. I was ecstatic. It was the first moment I knew we were making something special.

"Their excitement was contagious and made us feel that we had captured something special from the very beginning," says Ulrika.

A hotel room in Munich

In December 2024 we were on a short deadline and needed to see the next prototypes as soon as possible. Magnus and I were travelling by train, the way we always do, with all our ski gear. I'm pretty sure we were on our way to Engelberg in Switzerland. The Haglöfs team was in Munich for ISPO, the big outdoor trade fair. So we stopped there, booked the cheapest hotel room we could find and dragged our ski bags through the city on rented electric scooters.

We met Madeleine and Franziska Knitsch, designer at Haglöfs, in their hotel, where they had the samples waiting. The four of us squeezed into a tiny hotel room, trying on prototypes and testing every feature you can test without actually skiing. We laughed a lot. Mostly we were blown away by how good it looked.

"I think it sums up the whole collaboration: we had fun, we worked together and we created great products," says Madeleine.

"We did things a little differently and I think that's exactly what made this project so special," says Franziska.

It still makes me laugh that the fitting happened in a small hotel room in Munich.

A season of testing

We skied the prototypes for a whole season, in the Nordics, the Alps and the US. Most products annoy you somewhere, and you usually just live with it. This time I could actually change it, and that felt amazing.

The transceiver loops are a good example. You want your phone and your transceiver as far apart as possible, so a phone in your left pant pocket means the transceiver goes in the right chest pocket of the jacket. Then we noticed that Magnus and I do it the opposite way from each other. I keep my phone in the jacket, he keeps his in his pants. What if you're not wearing the jacket at all? Then it needs to fit in the chest pocket of the bib. And if you're left-handed, everything flips again. We kept going until everyone would have a spot that worked for them, whatever their habit.

Eva remembers how it started: "You loved it so much that you basically wanted one in every pocket!"

For the Haglöfs team, getting real feedback from the snow was part of the fun. "For us, it was a dream setup to have every prototype properly tested out on the slopes and get direct feedback," says Franziska. Ulrika said basically the same thing: "What I appreciated most was how engaged everyone was and how honest the feedback was throughout the process."

Sold out in the fitting room

The first kit, in grey, dropped in November 2025. We let the community know it was coming and threw a small party at the Haglöfs store in Åre, Sweden's biggest ski resort.

We had no idea how it would be received, but people were in the fitting rooms trying on sizes and slowly started stressing, realising things were selling out while they were in there. But before the party was over, every single piece had sold out. Nobody expected it to go that fast, us included.

Back in black

Something stuck on the Haglöfs side too. "One thing I genuinely believe Haglöfs has taken away from this collaboration is the confidence to be a little bolder and go all the way instead of always playing it safe," says Ulrika.

The kit is back... in black.

And it's better than the first one. We moved the fabric from a 15k to a 20k waterproof rating, which means it takes a lot more wet snow and rain before anything gets through, and we made a few smaller tweaks on top of that. Improving a kit that sold out before the launch party was even over wasn't a given, and we're really proud of where it landed. It drops 28 October.

Thank you Madeleine, Eva, Franziska and Ulrika, and everyone at Haglöfs who made this happen.

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