H. Holderness

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A year ago H. Holderness was founded trying to solve a problem

The story begins in the french alps. founder, Henrietta, noticed that there weren’t base-layers that girls wanted to wear. Instead, the women she was skiing with were choosing to wear their gym leggings in lieu of ‘traditional’ wooly thermals because they wanted to wear the same thing from breakfast to bed - from piste to party.

You can easily spend your day wearing your gym leggings in the mountains (hidden under salopettes instead of traditional thermals whilst on the piste and without salopettes when relaxing back at the chalet or at après). Unfortunately, the moth-bitten thermal long johns that are actually designed to be worn under your ski trousers don’t have the same stylistic appeal, so it’s no surprise women are favouring their gym leggings to wear from breakfast till bed.

So gym leggings have evolved into the new under-layer of choice for the ski market? Problem solved. Well, not really. Your beautiful Lululemon’s look great, but gym apparel is not designed to be worn underneath salopettes, nor in cold climates (clue in the word ‘gym’). So aside from being stretchy, all those design elements that are great in London - the zipped pocket for your keys, the decorative stitching and excessive panelling - suddenly don’t work so well in the mountains. The stitching embeds itself into your calves under your ski boots, there’s a zip for a pocket you can’t even reach when they’re under your salopettes (and it digs painfully into your back on every ski-lift) and you realise by the first coffee stop that your gym leggings aren’t keeping you warm.

With the two options available, girls were either sacrificing aesthetics in favour of warmth or vice versa. Why should be settle? At H. Holderness we thought we could do better. So we decided to create base-layers that combined the functionality of traditional wooly thermals with the aesthetics of beautifully designed gym leggings. Our base-layers are thermal insulating, but are designed with aesthetics in mind, they feature minimal seams and paneling to fit comfortably under your salpettes, but are equally at home sans salopettes dancing on the table after one to many vin chauds at après. Essentially, base-layers that perform on the piste and look good enough to show off afterwards. Or as we like to say: base-layers that take you from piste to party.

We want to introduce you to our New Zealand base-layer leggings, a favourite from our capsule collection and the only base-layers you need to pack this season. Design-wise, we’ve thought about it all - from breathability, thermal insulation, moisture-wicking to anti-wrinkle fabric fabric. Our leggings are full of ski-specific design elements to help girls get the most of their time out on the mountain and to keep them going from breakfast till bed, piste to party.

our key design elements

‘Barely there’ seam system

We’ve developed our ‘barely there’ seam system, meaning we only have seams where absolutely necessary to reduce chaffing and sore spots that you get from gym leggings. This means our base-layers fit smoothly around your legs and feel like a second skin.



Four-way stretch

Our fabric moves with you, not against you. Our four-way stretch enables you to get deep into your carving turns on the piste and your 360s in the park sans problem. Plus, they are anti-wrinkle and always come back to their original shape.



Thermal-insulating fabric blend

Great fabric composition is essential, especially in the mountains. We use a 250 g / m² synthetic blend that ensures the warmth of natural fibres, but with the durability of manmade fibres. It works hard to keep the cold out on chillier days and to keep you cool when it warms up at the end of the season



Breathable

It’s breathable and moisture wicking, regulating your body temperature and moving the perspiration away from the body and keeping you warmer and dryer for longer.



Easy to wash

Our base-layers are machine washable (unlike many traditional wooly thermals) so no worries about shrinking them. These are made to last season after season.

Don’t just take our word for it, here’s that our customers are saying…

“I was hiking above 2000m. We started in cold and windy and ended in hot conditions at the top. They performed perfectly”

“When I put them on I fell in love”

“I love the material, they are comfortable and climate regulating”