Performance Ski Is The Ultimate Aspen Family Affair

The Performance Ski family, from left: Tom, Dairinn and Jack Bowers and Lee Keating (seated).

An Aspen mainstay, Performance Ski is in the business of curating beautiful ski outfits.

Lee Keating grew up skiing at Ski Brule in Michigan’s Northern Peninsula. “I had this big blue snowmobile suit with a faux fur collar on it. It was so ugly!” she says. “I dreamed of one day having a beautiful ski outfit.” In 1987, she met World Cup downhill racer Tom Bowers, who had recently retired from ski racing. They started dating, and before long, she jumped in to help Bowers run his new ski shop, Performance Ski (performanceskiaspen.com). “It was a small shop that catered mostly to ski racers,” Keating says. There were padded sweaters and race gloves. Over time, the shop’s aesthetic evolved organically as the duo brought in high-end luxury brands that were little known at the time, from Postcard and Prada to Frauenschuh and Jet Set. “We were literally building brands,” she says.

In 2009, the Italian legacy skiwear company Authier was struggling, and Keating collaborated with the brand to keep it alive. Authier was sold almost exclusively at Performance Ski for a decade, with Keating driving design and the couple’s daughter, Dairinn Bowers, modeling the looks. In the last few years, they realized it was time to jettison Authier and create skiwear under the shop’s own label. The Performance Ski line for women launched in fall of 2022. Keating, Dairinn and Tom travel to Italy three times a year to source materials, including fabrics from a mill in Florence that dates back to the Medici family. Ironically, the shop that helped build name recognition for so many high-end ski brands isn’t pushing its own moniker. There’s no branding on the outside of the garments, though jackets are recognizable by their big zipper pull. “Our customers don’t need logos plastered all over them,” Keating says.

Dairinn Bowers models the new Performance Ski collection in Carmignano, Italy.

Both of the couple’s kids grew up ski racing in Aspen. Jack now races for the University of Denver, and Dairinn, who’s also a surfer and a professional hydrofoiler (“which is a sport that no one’s ever heard of,” Dairinn says), recently left a dream job at a film industry talent agency to join the family business. She’s designing skiwear, merchandising products and launching the shop’s website and e-commerce platform. “I’ve been a part of the shop forever,” Dairinn says. “When I was 10, I’d put on a little Christmas dress during the holidays and fold sweaters.” Over the years, she’s served as Performance Ski’s fashion model. “I’m a free model!” she says. More to the point, she knows the skiwear pieces intimately. “I’m a part of the spirit that created them.”

“Back then, we had no plan. No strategy. We just came into work every day and worked as hard as we could.” –LEE KEATING

Even though the family business is now officially multigenerational, some things haven’t changed. “Back then, we had no plan. No strategy. We just came into work every day and worked as hard as we could,” Keating says. “We had tons of fun—and that’s still our philosophy today.”