L.L. Bean Snowfields Lodge Patch — modern

An L.L. Bean Snowfields Lodge patch, pointed shield with a cream merrowed border — SNOWFIELDS in brown block over L O D G E letterspaced beneath, a pale blue sky, grey-blue mountains, a skier in brown dropping the face, and L.L. Bean 1912 in script at the bottom. The fraying along one edge looks deliberate: this is a styled-vintage piece rather than an old one, and it is listed as such.

L.L. Bean has been outfitting Maine skiers for longer than most Maine ski areas have existed, and for a long stretch the company's program patches, lodge patches and outfitter patches circulated alongside the resort ones without anybody thinking of them as a separate category.

They are much harder to find now, for a simple reason: resort patches were sold to skiers, who collected them. Program patches were given out to participants, who wore them out. There was no secondary market, no trading, nobody putting them in a binder.

Which means this documents a side of the sport that effectively has no archive — the outfitters, the programs, the people who sold you the wool and taught you to use it, rather than the mountains you took it to.

Bean's relationship with Maine skiing is older than most of the ski areas in this catalog, and the company outfitted people for decades before anybody built a lift worth driving to.

Embroidered on twill, merrowed edge, with fraying that appears to be by design. Modern production. Photos are the condition report.