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What is après-ski?

What the word means

French après (“after”) plus ski. It means, literally, after skiing, and it names the time, not the equipment.

Merriam-Webster gives 1951 as the first known use in English. The Spanish academy's historical dictionary notes in its etymology that the French term is attested from 1941, a decade earlier.

English dictionaries define it only as a social activity: Merriam-Webster has “social activity (as at a ski lodge) after a day's skiing”. None of them assigns it a clock time.

Why a clothing brand is named after it

This is the part most explanations skip, and it is the reason we use the word at all. Après-ski was a garment before it was a party.

In French the clothing sense is not a later marketing borrowing. The Office québécois de la langue française's terminology record, written in 1982, lists après-ski only as footwear, a comfortable boot you put on to relax after winter sport, and files it under the domain “chaussure”.

The Real Academia Española goes further and labels the footwear sense the “etymological” one, with Spanish print citations from 1965 and a 1967 advertisement.

The garment category is older than the usual story allows. The Colorado Snowsports Museum's ski-fashion timeline records a Claire McCardell “Après Ski” design in the 1940s, and pairs it with a New York Times item of 19 November 1948 describing the same habit without using the word.

By 1969 it was couture: The Museum at FIT holds a Madame Grès “après ski ensemble” of that year, published in Vogue and later exhibited in Expedition: Fashion from the Extreme.

Where it came from

Nobody can show you where it started. The Tyrolean tourist board, the party with every reason to claim it, writes only that “some say” après-ski was invented in St. Anton am Arlberg, and attributes the claim to no one.

The International Skiing History Association's own history of St. Anton catalogues the town's documented firsts in detail: Ski-Club Arlberg in 1901, Hannes Schneider teaching from 1907, the Galzigbahn in 1937, and makes no origin claim for après-ski at all.

What is defensible is narrower: the word and the commercial ritual spread with mass Alpine skiing from the 1940s onward. Any page naming a single inventor is repeating a story, not reporting a fact.

What time does après-ski start?

You will see 3pm to 7pm quoted as though it were a definition. It is a convention, and not a well-observed one.

There is no official window. Afar states plainly that there is “no official time frame”, with the afternoon as the usual start and no fixed end.

Not one of the dictionaries we checked: Merriam-Webster, Oxford, the OQLF: assigns après-ski an hour. They all define it relative to the skiing.

And the archetype undercuts the folk window from the other side: Ski Arlberg's own page on the Krazy Kanguruh records its DJ starting at midday, well before the lifts stopped.

The places people mean

The Krazy Kanguruh in St. Anton is the one venue with a documented history. Ski Arlberg, the lift company, bills it as après-ski since 1965 and the oldest such bar in the town; the International Skiing History Association calls it legendary independently.

It is also not the building it was. The original was bulldozed after the 2024-25 season, and a completely rebuilt venue opened on 18 December 2025. It closes for the off-season and is due to trade again in winter 2026/27, so a guide describing either the old room or a permanent closure is out of date in opposite directions.

The Mooserwirt's prominence is confirmed by the Tyrolean tourist board, which calls its parties legendary. Every number attached to it, litres of beer, visitor counts, “most dangerous bar in the Alps”, traces only to marketing.

How much of a resort's money is après

Après is not a sideshow in resort economics. Reporting on the National Ski Areas Association's annual financial survey, the trade journal SAM puts lift-ticket revenue at roughly 55% of total revenue at large US ski areas, meaning nearly half of the money is made somewhere other than the lift.

Food and beverage is the largest single share of that non-ticket revenue in every ski-area size band.

Revenue per skier visit keeps setting records: $142.50 in 2023-24, and $147.44 the following season.

What no source supports is a figure for après-ski specifically. Nobody breaks it out, so anyone quoting you a percentage for après has made it up.

Do snowboarders say après-ski?

The French word is sport-neutral on its face: it names the time of day, not the thing strapped to your feet.

Academic work on snowboarding culture uses “après snow” alongside après-ski: Holly Thorpe's study of the sport's lifestyle refers to “après snow culture more broadly”.

We looked for a source saying snowboarders avoid the term and did not find one in either direction. So treat the idea that après-ski is a skier's word as an impression, ours included, rather than a fact.

How Japan does it

Japan runs the ritual differently, and its national tourism body says so: après-ski there is “less common than in the West”, and natural hot springs are “perhaps more popular than bars and restaurants”.

Nozawa Onsen has 18 public hot springs; Niseko and Hakuba carry the Western-style bar scene for those who want it.

What people get wrong

That après-ski is originally about drinking. French and Quebec lexicography define it first as footwear.

That it means a specific window such as 3 to 7pm. No dictionary assigns hours, and the archetypal bar opened at midday.

That a named resort invented it. The Tyrolean tourist board itself says only “some say”.

That it became a clothing category in the 1970s. Claire McCardell was designing “Après Ski” pieces in the 1940s and the New York Times described the practice in 1948.

That the term is a 1950s invention. The French usage is attested from 1941.

Claims we left off this page

Each of these is repeated widely and traces to no source we could verify. We would rather tell you that than pass it on.

That après-ski descends from the European thé dansant, or tea dance. Repeated often, connected to ski resorts by no source we could find.
That Scandinavia has a distinct “afterski” tradition. Asserted constantly; documented in no English-language source we could reach.
The Mooserwirt's beer and visitor statistics, which trace only to marketing copy.
That après-ski is a measurable driver of ski-trip bookings. The one peer-reviewed study we found ranked entertainment lowest of five factors among ski enthusiasts.

Common questions

What does après-ski literally mean?

After skiing. It is French: après means after. The term names the time of day, not the sport and not the equipment.

What time is après-ski?

There is no official window. Afar states there is no official time frame, and none of the dictionaries we checked assigns it an hour. The afternoon onward is the convention, but the most famous après bar in the Alps had its DJ starting at midday.

Is après-ski only for skiers?

The word names the time, not the equipment, and academic work on snowboarding culture uses après snow alongside après-ski. We looked for a source saying snowboarders avoid the term and could not find one either way.

Is après-ski a type of clothing or an activity?

Both, and the clothing sense is older in French. The Office québécois de la langue française's 1982 terminology record lists après-ski only as footwear, filed under footwear, and the Spanish academy calls the footwear sense the etymological one.

Who invented après-ski?

Nobody can show you. The Tyrolean tourist board says only that some say it was invented in St. Anton am Arlberg, and names no one. Anyone telling you otherwise is repeating a story.

What we make for it

We make cotton sweatshirts for the hours after riding, not for riding in. There is a longer answer in what to wear après-ski, and if you want the fabric reasoning it is in the cotton guide.

I'm Difficult Sweatshirt. A black diamond on a white crewneck, the trail rating for runs that aren't for everyone. 100% Cotton. Sizes S, M, L, XL. Colours Lucent White. $34.99
Board Meeting Sweatshirt. Three riders on a chairlift, the only board meeting worth attending. Sizes M, L, XL. Colours Flower Gray. $44.99
Snowboard Social Club Sweatshirt. Nine illustrated riders across the front of an all-cotton crewneck. 100% Cotton. Sizes S, M, L, XL. Colours Apricot. $34.99