A peek at Bally’s Peak Outlook Foundation

To look at Bally’s Spring/Summer 2023 collection strutting down the runway last week in Milan, you might never guess that the brand’s past and present are both firmly rooted in the mountaineering world. After all, snakeskin cowboy boots and leather weekend bags don’t exactly scream “outdoorsy.” But in 2022, Bally will make good on a promise to return to its mountainous roots by completing a cleanup of the Himalayas’ highest peaks.

The Swiss fashion house, founded in 1851, is best known for its shoes and leather goods, but got its start with something a little more rugged. In 1953, Tenzing Norgay wore a pair of Bally reindeer fur boots when he achieved the first ascent of Mount Everest with Sir Edmund Hillary. Bally later designed custom shoes worn by climbers on the first ascent of Mount Lhotse, the world’s fourth-highest mountain.

Today, Bally is pursuing two worlds: the exclusivity of luxury fashion (a pair of Bally snow boots retails for $875) and the realities of high-altitude mountaineering (each of the 600+ climbers who attempts to summit Everest each year leaves an average of 18 pounds of trash on the mountain).

In 2019 Bally announced its Peak Outlook Initiative, a program aimed at removing garbage from the world’s tallest peaks.

• That year, a Bally-sponsored expedition removed more than a ton of waste from Everest, half of which was retrieved by climbers from the “Death Zone,” above 8,000 meters.
• In 2020, the brand launched a nonprofit—the Peak Outlook Foundation—and pledged to sponsor cleanups of eight 8,000-meter peaks in the Himalayas by 2022, which they called their “8 x 8,000” project.

Still to come: The Covid-19 pandemic canceled the 2020 Everest climbing season, but didn’t put an end to the 8 x 8,000 initiative. Over a period of 47 days in late 2020, Bally-funded expeditions removed 2.2 tons of waste from the base camps of Cho Oyu, Everest, Lhotse, and Makalu.

• They removed tin cans, tents, and wooden crates, as well as batteries and other toxic materials, which were transferred to Kathmandu for disposal.

By the completion of the project, Bally-funded expeditions will remove waste from the base camps of Mt. Dhaulagiri, Mt. Manaslu, Mt. Annapurna I, and Mt. Kanchenjunga, the brand said.—MA