Crete Jorts, a tropical Mediterranean paradise, ancient greek philosophy, sun, snow, skis, jorts, ancient history, modern adventures. Ripton is all about solving problems differently, building high-performance denim is an indirect way to solve technical solutions in outdoor apparel, thus improving the denim experience, making it more comfortable and more fun, thus making our experiences better, making the dance more rockstar, more fun, a sum that’s greater than the parts, realigning atoms, realigning paradigms.
People send us a fair amount of #jontent (jorts content) these days but the Crete jorts mission stood out as especially synergistic with who we are and how we go about things. This juxtaposition of a warm beautiful island, the homeland of Zeus, combined with rugged mountain huts, and spring skiing corn. It just feels very Ripton, very much like the cultural intersection of where the beach and soft weathered beach-y vibes meet the mountains and the playful multitudes to discover, the diversity of ways you can surf through life in these unique biomes.
It was always easy to imagine beaches growing up in the dark winters of northern Vermont. They stood out in photos and movies and popular culture, surf towns, tropical islands, like something of another dimension, something that must be so nice, where life is easy, warm, soft, plentiful, chill. Even just the idea of surfing, seemed so graceful, so cool, so mystical. It’s always seemed like an ideal to chase in ski and bike spaces, cultures arguably built more on racing. This almost artistically driven form of physical self-expression, this flowing through space on a bike, on skis, on anything really, has always had some genetic relationship to surfing, the most fluid of all outdoor dances. That’s the trippy part when outdoor activities become more of a dance, they actually become intuitive, they become art, and the whole thing is organic and raw, and not about winning, or racing, or anything too technical at all. That’s the void we hope to help fill and the journey we’re on, and what these ladies so gracefully exemplified on their quest for discovery, surfing spring corn high above the Mediterranean in jorts. In the same vein of juxtaposition we find ourselves constantly ricocheting between light hearted self-mockery and laughter, a spoof like jortlandia, land of jort spoofs, puns, and home-made mullets, bam, we slingshot into the land of the serene, the serious, what started as a game, maybe like a romance has gotten so serious, like something that captivates our whole lives, this elusive chase, this mission we’re on over here to build something totally different, it has the same contradictions the same highs and lows, hot and cold of skiing on Crete in jorts.
