686 and Volcom: American Brands Worth Knowing
686 and Volcom: action sports heritage brands making ski outerwear with technical credibility. Where they sit and what they offer.
686 and Volcom are American brands with roots in snow sports and action sports culture respectively. They make ski outerwear that sometimes gets overlooked in a European market that defaults to Scandinavian technical brands or established Alpine names. That overlooks some genuine technical capability worth knowing about.
686
686 Clothing was founded in 1992 in Los Angeles by Mike West, originally focused on snowboard outerwear. The brand name has a personal origin tied to the founder, though the details are not publicly confirmed. Whatever the origin, the West Coast identity stuck. Three decades later, 686 is a serious technical outerwear brand with a ski range built on the same technical foundations as their snowboard line.
What they do well:
686’s technical line, the GORE-TEX and proprietary membrane products, sits at the high end of what you would expect from a thirty-year-old outerwear brand with genuine mountain sport credentials. The construction details are there: fully taped seams, high waterproof ratings, proper breathability on higher-end models for sustained output skiing, helmet-compatible hoods, ski-specific articulation.
The Smarty technology that 686 developed, an outerwear system with a removable inner jacket or liner that converts between configurations, is the kind of functional innovation that reflects actual on-mountain thinking. The ability to reconfigure a jacket across different temperature ranges without carrying multiple separate garments has real practical value for the British skier who encounters everything from February cold to spring sun within a single day.
The aesthetic:
686 occupies a position between the technical-first Scandinavian brands and the lifestyle-inflected American snow sports market. The designs are more visually varied than a brand like Arc’teryx, which might matter depending on what you want from your kit. The product at the technical end of the range can be worn on the mountain without apology; the broader range includes more casual options that are frankly aimed at a different customer.
The honest assessment for the British market:
686 is less widely distributed in the UK than the Scandinavian brands or the established Alpine names, which means you are more likely to be buying online. The technical specifications at the upper end of the range are genuinely strong. The Smarty system, if the convertible concept appeals to you, is one of the better implementations of it on the market. Worth evaluating directly rather than skipping on account of limited UK retail presence.
Volcom
Volcom was founded in 1991 in Costa Mesa, California, and grew as one of the foundational surf-skate-snow lifestyle brands of the 1990s and 2000s. The ski and snowboard clothing line has always sat alongside and been influenced by the brand’s broader youth culture positioning.
What this means for the technical ski apparel customer: Volcom’s range runs from the genuinely functional to the firmly lifestyle, and the proportion of each varies by product line and season. The serious ski customer needs to identify the appropriate end of the range rather than treating the brand as uniformly technical or uniformly lifestyle.
The technical end:
Volcom’s Gore-Tex line and the upper end of their outerwear range use proper technical construction: the same waterproof-breathable membrane and seam-taping standards you would expect from a brand competing in the technical outerwear market. At this level, the products perform correctly on the mountain.
The construction reality:
Where Volcom requires attention is in the mid-range of their ski range, where the aesthetic priorities sometimes outweigh the technical ones. Jackets that look excellent in the resort but have lower waterproof ratings and limited breathability are not a problem for the occasional skier; they are a problem for the person skiing seven hours a day in February Alps conditions. Read the specifications on the specific product rather than relying on the brand name as a guarantee of technical performance.
The aesthetic:
Volcom is a brand with genuine design credibility. The creative director history and the brand’s roots in action sports culture produce clothing that tends to look better than brands with a purely technical orientation. For the skier who wants both performance and to not look like they raided a 1990s ski wear catalogue, Volcom’s technical products offer a reasonable combination.
Choosing Between Them
686 and Volcom are not directly competing for the same customer. 686 is more consistently technical across the range and should be evaluated as a performance brand first. Volcom’s strengths are in the combination of credible technical construction at the top of the range with design quality that the purely functional brands do not always match.
For the BARSC reader, the serious recreational skier who wants kit that performs and does not need the legacy ski brand premium, both brands have products worth looking at, with the caveat that the specification check before purchasing is important for Volcom specifically.
BARSC has no commercial relationship with 686 or Volcom. This feature reflects an independent assessment of both brands and their ski clothing ranges.