Maria Bogner

Maria Bogner (née Lux, 1914 – 17 November 2002) was a German fashion designer credited with developing practical stretch pants, thereby profoundly affecting the direction of the ski fashion industry. She created colorful, sexy, and functional stretchy skiwear. Her husband's established ski apparel company, the development of stretch material in the 1950s, and her sewing skills all contributed to her success. Her stretch pants, as modeled by leading ski athletes of the period, provided aerodynamic, form-fitting cut, color variety and practicality as ski garments. In 1937 she married Wilhelm Bogner (Willy Sr.), a German Nordic combined ski champion who competed in the 1930s. Together, they had three children, Rosemarie, Michael, and Wilhelm (Willy Jr.). Willy Bogner's success as a skier allowed him and his future wife, then Maria Lux, to establish a clothing line in 1932, that included outfitting the German national ski team at the 1936 Winter Olympics.

Her husband died in 1977 and she died in 2002. The growth of their business was interrupted by WWII and her husband's internment by the US. In addition to creating and selling parkas, Bogner also began rebuilding the business by creating other products, such as aprons. In 1955 Bogner began branding the company with a logo, styled as a “B”, on all zippers found on their clothing.

Early 1950s, stretch pants

In the early 1950s, the Bogners were manufacturing ski pants in gabardine fabric. They were distinctive both for their durability and the wide choice of bright, appealing colors—a break from the previous standards of black, blue and forest green. developed by the Swiss company, Heberlein (de), and marketed under the name, Helanca (cs de), which was incorporated into a prototype pair of ski pants. The problem was how to sew it successfully, which Bogner solved. Early examples of her stretch pants lost their resiliency after a few seasons. This problem was solved such that by 1955, she was exporting them to the US in 42 different colors. The pants were highly successful, despite costing double what conventional ski pants cost at the time, thanks to their aerodynamic, sexy, form-fitting cut and wide variety of colors. The product was marketed effectively in catalogs and advertisements, using attractive young women and celebrity athletes, such as Stein Eriksen, as models. In its 1995 "Skiing for Women" issue, Skiing magazine cited Bogner as a skiing "legend", along with Andrea Mead Lawrence and Martha Rockwell