Gwyneth Paltrow testifies during her trial on March 24, 2023, in Park City, Utah.
Pool/Getty ImagesMike Rogge and John Coleman were putting the final touches together for the spring issue of the outdoor culture print magazine Mountain Gazette on March 28 when the topic of Gwyneth Paltrow's ski trial came up.
A man is suing the actress for $300,000 after a 2016 collision on the slopes at a ski resort in Utah, and the buzz around the lawsuit is attracting wide attention to an often-misrepresented sport.
“For us, it’s very rare that skiing enters the larger cultural zeitgeist,” said Rogge, the magazine’s editor, who lives in Tahoe. “I’d say almost every time, it gets portrayed wrong — go watch the latest Lindsay Lohan movie to see what I mean. It’s our job as an outdoor culture magazine to kindly poke fun at this stuff.”
Rogge and Coleman, the magazine’s art director, were, like many Americans, befuddled by some of the details pouring out of the courtroom. In particular, the soundbite when Paltrow explained in her testimony that she had “lost a half day of skiing” due to the collision.
“We just laughed about it. I rarely ski a full day, and I live in Tahoe. Who among us would not be bummed to lose a half day?” Rogge said, and an idea took from there.
Currently available to preorder on the Mountain Gazette website are a sweater and a shirt (in various colors) with the now-fabled quote: “Well, I lost a half a day of skiing.” Rogge publicized the garb on his Twitter page, and orders began to flow in.
This isn’t the first time Rogge and the Mountain Gazette have used clothing to build community. Last year, they raised $20,000 for Protect Our Winters, a nonprofit organization combating climate change, through a custom shirt that shows a personified corn skiing the slopes.
They also created the “Connie Marshall is my homegirl” T-shirt to honor the “Queen of the Alta Ski Area” in Utah, and the proceeds benefited Amazing Ski & Snow People, which supports the mental health needs of the ski patrol community.
The plans for the latest venture into fabric fundraising are still coming together, but Rogge has an idea for where the revenue generated from the “half day” clothes can go.
Mountain Gazette is a large-format, biannual outdoor culture magazine, founded in 1966 and revived in 2020 for a modern era.
Courtesy of the Mountain Gazette“I thought what we’d do is try to find one of the many organizations that get youth on the hill,” he said. “From this half day of tragedy from Gwyneth Paltrow, we’ll give a full day to kids who have never skied or snowboarded.”
The shirts and sweaters are expected to begin shipping next week, and the Mountain Gazette spring issue begins shipping at the end of April.