I’ve been wearing baggy snowpants since I was in 8th grade. I first realized that baggy pants make you look much better than you actually are when I saw this guy at my mountain with baggy pants and ON3P skis. I grew up skiing at Mt. Ashland, but that was the moment I thought, oh — baggy looks good. I kind of looked up to that guy, mostly because he just looked cool standing there in line. I saw him ski a bit and he was good — had sort of a Candide Thovex look to him. So I decided I needed to find myself some baggy pants.
And I looked hard. Nowadays, they’re easy to find — a quick Google search will do it. But back then, if you searched “baggy snow pants,” literally nothing came up besides regular (not baggy) snowpants. So I tried getting 3XL generic snowpants, but the waist on those was way too big, and they didn’t look right. So I said to myself, shit, I might just have to make them myself. But I had nowhere to even start.
I kept searching and eventually found these old military snowpants that were all white. They were just a shell and had holes for pockets, but they were only $14 and were perfect — a little too baggy if you asked anyone else, but I thought they were perfect. Here’s a picture of me shortly after I found those baggy pants on Amazon. Pretty high quality for an eighth grader, I know.
My friend Rio Giancarlo and I were really into taking skiing flicks. But these pants right here were the first-ever MaxReade Apparel snowpants.
I decided on the name MRA (MaxReade Apparel) in my kitchen one day. I said, “I don’t know what else to call it, and it describes what I do pretty well… Max Reade’s apparel.” I also considered calling it “Swerve” for a long time — still think that would’ve been dope. Anyway, those were the first MRA pants. Then I started dyeing them myself and reselling them. Check out these ones — the first pants I dyed and sold for $30. Talk about inflation!
That handsome devil modeling them is my buddy Davidson Graham, who will probably be a famous soccer player soon. I kept it going for a while — buying them on Amazon, dyeing them, and reselling them on my Instagram story. Somewhere along the way, the Amazon military pants went out of stock, so I cut up the last pairs and made some for myself. Here are some pictures of the pants I sewed by myself at age 17.
I kept doing that for a while, and at the time, I was working as a camp counselor at MHSSC (Mt. Hood Summer Ski Camps). There, I met a friend named Henry Sabella, owner of Jibskin. We collabed on a pair of pants and sold them for $150. They sold well, and it inspired me to finally find a manufacturer.
As if answering my request, some random guy hit me up on Instagram and said, “Yo, we can make your pants.” He was maybe 20 or 21 at the time — just a year older than me — and lived in Pakistan. He had also just started his own business. So we began a partnership and have been growing alongside each other ever since. Together we’ve developed the 3rd, 4th, 5th, and now the 6th edition of MRA snowpants (available now).
Although I’m counting editions, there were many iterations in between to get the perfect baggy fit that I’m now really proud of.
Anyway — enough about me. This whole blog was supposed to be about baggy pants and how baggy your pants should be on the mountain. I just had to give a bit of background to show that I know my stuff when it comes to baggy snowpants.
Ultimately, it comes down to how you look and how you feel in the pants. The point of wearing baggy snowpants is to cover up little imperfections in your skiing or boarding — and to just look dope as hell. But with that comes the feeling. Something I talk about a lot is the way snowpants make you feel. It’s a feeling of confidence — and it’s a great one.
So, when trying on your baggy pants, of course you’ve got to ask yourself: how baggy do I want them? If you want to go full-out park rat, super baggy style — go for it. It comes down to your taste. If you are not sure, we do offer free returns and exchanges so you can always try on a pair of pants and send them back if you want a different size.
Our pants are designed to fit most people no matter what size you get (especially if you own or get one of our belts). The waists have elastic so they can stretch to fit wide waists but default to a smaller size, so with a belt, you can wear any size comfortably.
When designing snowpants, that was one of my biggest goals — to make pants that fit where you want them to fit and are baggy where it looks good. Seems simple, but it took a long time to figure out.
Freestyle skiers are often looking for a casual baggy look. Just cover their ski boots but not a ton of bag up top. On our size chart, this would be either perfectly baggy or one step down from that, kinda baggy.
Lots of park rats on the other hand, like their snow pants perfectly baggy to really baggy. Again, it comes down to preference. Me personally, I think the baggier the better. To a certain point. I have seen some ridiculously baggy pants before and cringed. But nowadays people are going for that moderate bag. We would suggest perfectly baggy on our size chart for those of you who want it to be ummm.. Perfectly baggy….
Check out our product pages to take a look at the best baggy ski pants, and find the perfect fit using our size charts.
PEACE