Children's Marmot Fashion Brand

Marmot opens the M letter, and its promise frames the whole brand: everything your adventure needs to hit the slopes and explore the trails. That single line sums up the children's range - an outdoor brand, written for slopes and trails rather than the playground alone - and the history that follows explains where that outdoor seriousness came from.

In April 1971, University of California Santa Cruz students Eric Reynolds and Dave Huntley were in Alaska's Juneau Icefield on a school Glaciology project. It was there on a glacier that the idea of a Marmot Club began. The setting matters: not a classroom or a shop, but a glacier, on a school project studying ice - the brand that would dress children for snow began as a students' idea formed in the snow itself.

The Marmot Club: Everyone Was President

To become a Marmot, you had to climb a glaciated peak with another Marmot. One of the rules of the club was that everyone was President. Most of the other rules dealt with a collegiate fascination for bodily functions. That club test - climb a glaciated peak, with another Marmot - shows the brand's origin character: membership earned outdoors, on ice, in company, with no hierarchy at all, since everyone held the presidency at once. That spirit is the same spirit the kids' line is sold in: the outdoors as something you join by doing it.

Throughout that summer and over the next two years, Eric and Dave also began making prototypes of down products in their dorm room. Their first products were a down vest, a sweater and a parka and, later, three down sleeping bags. Down, the warm fill of mountain clothing, is there from the very first experiments, which is why insulation sits at the centre of what the name Marmot still means in outdoor clothing.

Spring 1974: Marmot the Company, and What the Name Means

In the spring of 1974, Marmot the company was born: three years from glacier club to company, by way of dorm-room down prototypes. Did you know? The name 'Marmot' refers to a group of highly social, large ground squirrels that live in mountainous areas - and it ties the whole story together: a social club named for social mountain animals, making clothing for mountains.

Learn more about Marmot kids clothing at the brand's own site: the official Marmot kids pages are linked in References below, where current children's styles, sizes and prices belong. See also the guide to snow pants linked from this page, because snow pants are the children's garment where this brand's slope-and-trail promise is tested hardest - a child who stays warm and dry stays out longer, and a child who does not, does not.

Buying Children's Outdoor Clothing Well: General Standards

The buying guidance here is general children's outdoor-clothing guidance, labelled as a general standard and not as a claim about the current Marmot range. For slope and trail clothing, judge a jacket or pant by its job in layers: a shell that sheds weather, insulation that traps warmth without bulk that stops a child moving, and closures small hands can work with gloves on. Fit should allow the layer underneath and room to climb, bend and fall safely - bought by current measurements with modest growing room, never so large that cuffs and hems become hazards on lifts, bikes or trails.

In short: everything your adventure needs to hit the slopes and explore the trails; the Marmot Club idea formed in April 1971 on Alaska's Juneau Icefield by University of California Santa Cruz students Eric Reynolds and Dave Huntley, on a school Glaciology project; membership by climbing a glaciated peak with another Marmot, with everyone President; down prototypes made in a dorm room - a down vest, a sweater and a parka, and later three down sleeping bags; Marmot the company born in the spring of 1974; and a name taken from the highly social, large ground squirrels of mountainous areas. The gallery below shows Marmot kids clothing in a 2017 photo.

Photos