A TRIBUTE TO WILLY B.

from ART OF SNOW 2020

LORENZ BACH - COUTURIER

Bogner, the name speaks volumes. A name that is synonymous with the fashion house that came up with the trendsetter tailored stretch trousers in the fifties that took the world by storm having forever overturned the world of sports. Bogner is also the brainchild behind FIRE & ICE, the first sports film whose charisma drew more than twomillion people to see it in cinemas in Germany alone. At the time, a whole generation was captivated by a kind of magical fever for skiing, snowboarding, dance and music.

Willy Bogner was responsible for the craziest of scenes in four James Bond films, the wildest scenes that the world had ever scene to date – the ice canal scene just one of them. In 1986 Willy Bogner decided to go even further, this time on his own steam. Nobody really remembers the exact story of how FIRE & ICE came about, except that he invited John Eaves und Suzy Chaffee, the most celebrated ski acrobats at the time to the set. The outcome would be the legendary and exhilarating ski jump in the midst of an explosion to the song by Marietta Waters that stayed on the charts for weeks.

But the ultimate hit had to be the fact that the shot had turned ski acrobatics into ski aesthetics, Bogner as a winter sports brand becoming a world brand – a brand whose awareness level is only rivalled by the big German car manufacturers today. What Bogner achieved was a mise en scène only comparable with what the likes of someone like Elon Musk can achieve today. Men who live their brands to a T – creative, without compromise, enthusiastic and always with total commitment! Of course the ‘so-called’ snowboard, which was still relatively unknown at the time, also had a key role. In fact the snowboarding scenes with Tom Sims surfing down the sand dunes to the music of the Alan Parsons Project have become legendary. There are no figures, but the movie struck a cord and thousands of young people began snowboarding. One of them was Reto Lamm, the first winner of Air&Style Innsbruck and halfpipe world champion whom Willy Bogner has been accompanying since 2002. He tells Art of Snow: “FIRE & ICE was the unprecedented push and motivation for us to get into the world of snowboarding.”

Three years after the film, the first FIRE+ICE collection went into the retail stores in 1989 – and today, 30 years later the revival follows suit, or as Bild magazine put it: “He does it again.” Using the ‘local Bogner mountain’, the Corvatsch, the famous fire scene is re-emulated. But with ski acrobatics having evolved in leaps and bounds, some of the best freeski pros like Bene Mayr, Sven Kueenle and Laura Fritzenwallner take part this time round. The Phantom Flex 4K, one of the best cameras in the world, taking a thousand images a second! A deciding factor in a scene in which the timing takes place within fractions of a second! The result is some very explosive pictures – those from way back when and those from today melding within the zeitgeist of time.

**Das nächtliche Filmset auf dem Corvatsch 2019**

And what about the FIRE+ICE collection? It has become ever so courageous, displaying a superbly cool new look and stylish urban design elements that you can confidently go out in to a high-end urban bar. Going from strength to strength FIRE+ICE it has been elevated to an autonomous label, which is now available in the Bogner stores as well as in the dedicated FIRE+ICE stores. Congratulations, Willy Bogner!