Shaun White's Business is Red Hot

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Photograph by Martin Schoeller

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Photograph by Martin Schoeller

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Inside the White House

White's most valuable asset of all, the key to that $150 billion, may be an eccentric charisma that is an irresistible draw for kids -- and, more important, their parents. In a post-Olympics interview on CNN, White marveled at the attention flight attendants lavished on him after seeing his gold medal: "I had unlimited service after that. I was gettin' drinks. I was gettin' snacks. I was taking photos in the back... ." The anchor interrupts, "Wait a minute, drinks? You're 19 years old!" Without missing a beat, White drawls: "I'm talking about Mountain Dews, baby." And with that, a little backstage bragging was transformed into boy-next-door wholesomeness. A little sass to impress the kids, an apple-cheeked smile to win over parents everywhere, and for his sponsor at the time, Mountain Dew, a plug money can't buy.

"Blood wicking."

White has just returned from a surf trip in Bali and the Maldives, and he looks tan and fit, though his rolling SoCal twang is hoarse from a previous night's karaoke party in Los Angeles. He and Jesse are tucked into a booth at Freemans, a restaurant on Manhattan's Lower East Side with a vintage zinc bar and a taxidermy collection that ranges from a white goose in a landing approach to a wall of jackelope skulls.

White is describing the properties of the fabrics in the clothes he designs with brother Jesse, noodling an inside joke about the amount of blood snowboarders and skateboarders tend to spill. "With snowboarding, there are only a certain number of fabrics that are waterproof. It's a lot of function with the fashion," he says. "For Target, it'd be nice, but my cotton doesn't need to be blood wicking."

The Whites have been building their professional partnership since 2002, around the time when Burton Snowboards offered Shaun a chance to design his own pro boot. He had been riding for Burton since he was 7, when the company expanded into kids' gear, but after several years on the pro circuit, he was looking to throw his leash. "I was getting older and didn't think I could roll with Mom and Dad anymore," he says. "So what's the next best thing? Older brother."

In his new role as quasi-adult supervision for a 15-year-old, Jesse handled the travel schedule, shot promo photos, and explained to the occasional New Zealand rental company how the car got wrecked. "I was 22 and just learning how to be an adult myself," he says. "It was way too much responsibility." Adding to it, Shaun asked him to take on the design work: "I've always loved Jesse's art, so he designed the boot. It sold out in the first hour of a trade show, and we had to do a re-release. That's where it all began."

For four seasons now, the Whites have created boards, boots, bindings, jackets, pants, and underwear for Burton. Together, they brought a radical reinterpretation to the boxy, baggy snowboard style by incorporating splashy colors and menswear elements: lapels, asymmetrical zippers, motorcycle-jacket cuts. "When I first started, I didn't have a clue about the difference between houndstooth and herringbone," Shaun says. But he had ideas that Jesse was able to translate into patterns.

"I'd say, 'Why don't we do a jacket like this?' " says Shaun.

"And then I'd draw it and say, 'Like this?' " says Jesse.

"And I'd say, 'Yeah, but with a pinstripe lining,' " says Shaun. "We wanted it to fit well and be different. It worked."

Already in touch with their inner marketers, they even titled the pieces: Puff the Magic Jacket, Jacket of the Gods, the Most Unholy Jacket Ever. "I wanted parents to have to call and ask, 'Do you have the Most Unholy Jacket Ever?' " laughs Shaun. It's a classic White touch, a way for rebellious kids to feel like they're buying from a peer. But since the rebellion stopped well short of Satanic cults or Columbine jokes, parents could laugh along. And drop the $200.

Despite the immediate success of the Whites' early gear, it took some convincing to get Burton to produce the women's line. "At first we were like, yeah ... no," says Greg Dacyshyn, Burton's creative director. "But then they came at me with full creative boards, showed me the presentation, and it wasn't about Shaun. It was about this design aesthetic Shaun saw. He was like, 'You're not making clothes for the girls I want to hook up with.' " The line tapped a market no one had targeted. "We always kept a smaller size of my pro model board because a lot of girls rode it," says Shaun. "There was this void. The clothes were all built for men, and in my experience, I think chicks ... ladies ... er ... they know what we call them ... special lady friends ... they want to look hot."