Words by Oliver Rind and Lukasz Allepot

The year is 1989. In a modest garage in suburban Montreal, a young university student named Evelyn Trempe sketches out an idea that would quietly ignite a revolution in ski apparel. Studying administration and marketing at UQAM (Université du Québec à Montréal), Evelyn was not only a skier—she was a maker with a sharp instinct for style. With little more than a vision, some fabric, and a warped ping-pong table, she sewed her first waterproof jacket and matching pants for her university ski team. Unbeknownst to her, that one act of creating gear for her ski team would open a floodgate of opportunity. She had stumbled onto something she never meant to find—as the best journeys often begin.

Around the same time, another skier, 22-year-old Eric D’Anjou, was working retail at a sportswear shop, feeling the same itch Evelyn had. He believed the ski world was ready for something different. Both dreamers. Both doers. It wouldn’t be long before the two became business partners. Travelling across the Island of Montreal in a van, they started selling their innovative gear—fresh, functional, and unlike anything else seen on the skiing market. And with that, Orage was born.

As the company gained traction through the early and mid-’90s, Orage continued to stand out for its design-forward, skier-first approach—even as a new medium was on the verge of trending. For Orage, there was only ever one vision: Innovation through style. A mantra they’ve never strayed from. When reflecting on the exponential growth of the company, Eric says, “We didn’t build our brand on what was already successful on the market—we defined success by creating product that hadn’t been made yet.” In other words, it was about breaking the mould; crafting original, ski-specific technologies and styles that weren’t already common in the sportswear market. That included quilted textures, corduroy finishes, bold silhouettes, and colour schemes that ran against the grain of mainstream fashion.

By the late 1990s and into the new millennium, the landscape of winter sports had shifted. Snowboarding surged to the forefront, while park skiing faded from the cultural frame. While other already well-established brands like Rossignol and Salomon had pivoted to meet the demands of the snowboarding trend, Orage held firm to its roots in skiing.

“I didn’t see why we couldn’t do what snowboarding could,” says co-founder Eric D’Anjou. “We wanted to show we could do anything in the park that we could on a board.” Orage set out to prove it by enlisting some of skiing’s most renowned skiers to help them test their prototypes out in the field. Their input sparked a collaborative energy that endures today, providing invaluable insights that drive the brand’s innovation toward unexpected avenues.

During the early 2000s, among the notable skiers Orage collaborated with was none other than JP Auclair, considered a pioneer of freeskiing, and one of the genre’s defining figures when snowboarding was the talk of the slopes. JP, alongside others, had co-founded the first all-athlete ski brand. While that brand represented a new frontier in skis and other hardgoods, JP’s partnership with Orage provided a means for the brand to shape style and performance in ski apparel in ways few others could. It became a symbiosis that revolutionized the genre of freeskiing altogether. They could collaborate, create, and test every piece of gear themselves— shouldering the brunt of the mountains, headlong into the wild, only to return to the drawing board to improve the tech featured in Orage’s apparel.

By the late 2000s, JP handpicked a rising talent to join Armada—Phil Casabon. More than just a gifted skier, Phil also had a distinct eye for design, bringing his own flair to skiwear with styles that echoed the laid-back and expressive vitality of the freeskiing scene, which was, by that time, competing playfully against the snowboarding movement. 

Orage naturally followed the path that was being carved out by a handful of freeskiing’s most creative minds at its side. “It became our DNA,” says Eric. “Moving from park to backcountry wasn’t a switch; it was an evolution. It’s not that we didn’t appreciate the half pipes and rails, but the backcountry… it’s pure, it’s liberating. We wanted to build gear that could thrive in that environment.”

With a full staff and a roster of professionals—from athletes to designers, often experts of both—Orage would soon be a name recognized far beyond the borders of the province. “I’m seeing it everywhere out west,” says Mason Mashon, a British Columbia-based photographer and skier who’s been working with Orage for a decade. “I’m seeing the brand on people out in the mountains. People are recognizing the quality of Orage’s gear.”

Their 2024 Fall–Winter collection, titled Born Cold, was a reflection of Quebec heritage—with glacial tones of winter captured brilliantly through Mason’s lens and rising-star film director Ben Lalande’s aesthetic, echoing the passion of skiers who embrace the harshest mountain conditions with confidence and pride. Orage always aims to design apparel that not only endures those elements but also empowers skiers to express their individuality in nature. “I think of it like travelling abroad,” says Eric. “When someone hears you speak, they might say, ‘Hey, you have an accent.’ When we come up with designs, we draw them with an accent.”

That distinct design language is what has earned Orage a reputation for standing out. That reputation is owed in part to Fred Dorais, the current creative director at Orage, whose inspired vision earned Orage a nomination for the Global Sports Style Award at the ISPO Awards in 2006. Years later, in 2020, the brand became the Gold Winner at ISPO for its novel textile ventilation system and the brand’s approach to utilizing sustainable textiles.

Orage ski apparel isn’t just a fashion statement on the mountain; it delivers performance and technical reliability without sacrificing personality. Today, that reputation has spread beyond the country. “We’re expanding in Europe,” says Simon Brizard, Head of Brand. “Europeans embrace innovation as much as we do here in Quebec. Our culture isn’t too far removed, and we want to secure a legacy over there as we’ve done here.”

Looking back at the past 30 years, Orage’s journey has never strayed far from its roots that began in a garage in Montreal. A single jacket and pant stitched with care and conviction have grown into a brand worn across continents—but always with that same accent. In a world of ephemeral trends in outdoor apparel, Orage continues to carve its own line: bold, technical, and unapologetically original.