It’s time.
Jane and Cody Seim have spent the past decade creating and building Cordova, a women’s luxury alpine label. Now, on its 10th anniversary, the brand is taking the plunge into menswear.
Cordova launched in 2016 with 120 women’s ski suits and is now sold at retailers including Net-a-porter, Mytheresa and Moda Operandi.
Both lifelong skiers, Jane Seim grew up doing cross-country and snowboarding while Cody Seim was an avid downhill fan. “At some point in our relationship, I decided to try downhill,” she said. “And something about that transition just really clicked for me. I understood the mountain in a different way, why the runs were groomed the way they were. But at the time, there wasn’t an apparel offering that matched the way I felt in those elements.”
So even though neither had a background in fashion, they saw a white space. Jane Seim, who was a photographer and had an art degree, began researching the history of skiing and ski fashion and gravitated toward the designs embraced by the “winter jet set” of the 1960s and ’70s. “The lines were clean and there was an element of tailoring,” she said.
She found a patternmaker in Vancouver and together they created that first small collection, which launched online. “We started to get a little bit of traction and then a month and a half later, Selfridges reached out to us,” she said. “The following year, it was Matches and Net-a-porter and it just snowballed from there.”
They’re hoping that same demand will carry through to the new men’s offering.
“The demand has been incredible, and we’ve been focused on women for the past 10 years,” Cody Seim said. “It’s been a really exciting ride.” But after being asked by customers for years when they were going to offer men’s, they finally gave in.
“We’ve been blending fashion and performance for demanding environments and a demanding customer base for 10 years, and it took a while to build that craft and that trust,” Cody Seim said. “We think with our women’s collections, we’ve got the right point of view. For me, as a lifelong skier, not only am I tired of wearing other brands at this point, but like when Jane started women’s, I think there’s a big regression to the men’s. Everything is very tech-driven. Of course, we need technical performance in skiing, but there are a lot of the same fabrics, the same cuts, the same looks and colors out there. It all kind of blends together.”
The debut collection features nine silhouettes across 21 styles, including ski jackets, pants, one-piece suits and knitwear, with prices ranging from $160 for accessories to $1,980 for ski suits. A ski jacket in waterproof Italian wool is $1,350 with pants in the same fabric that retail for around $900, and puffers are $1,000 or $1,400, depending upon the fabrics, most of which come from Europe or Japan.
Much like the women’s, the men’s collection blends performance and tailoring in pieces that offer a “timeless sensibility” with a “hint of nostalgia,” Jane Seim said.
“There are unexpected materials in prints and colorways that create an emotional connection and some excitement for men,” her husband added. “We felt there was a need in the market and this is the right time to meet that.”
The plan is to offer the line online as well as through select wholesale accounts. “We wanted to be balanced,” Cody Seim said. “We chose some of our top boutiques in places like the French Alps and Courcelles or Aspen or Japan. Digitally, we chose to work with Browns Farfetch to carry online only, and in the U.S., Forward is carrying the men’s line. We wanted keep it curated to begin with before we show it during Paris market in January.”
While the Cordova story is one of successful entrepreneurship, there’s also a heart-wrenching story behind its name and logo. The brand is named after a town in Alaska where Jane Seim’s family went every summer. “I grew up in fishing camps, picking berries with my mom in the woods while my dad ran the salmon cannery,” she said.
Right outside Cordova is Mount Eccles. As the winter snow melts, the contrasting rock faces create an image that has become known as the woman on the mountain. Tragically, Jane Seim’s older sister was “ski bumming” in Crestview, Colo., one day, and decided to drive down to meet friends in Santa Fe. But she never made it: her car went off the side of the mountain and she was killed.
“My mom said, ‘That’s my lady on the mountain,’” Jane Seim said, of the Mount Eccles peak that has become Cordova’s logo. “It’s a way to keep her spirit alive.”