Gian Sutter

Gian Sutter is one of the unsung heroes of the European snowboard scene. A prodigy of Laax, raised with the Swiss national team but then decided to hit pause on competing to focus his efforts on Escape, one of the pre-eminent European film crews and hosts of Escape Cup, which has established itself as the Alps’ premier season enders. Despite his penchant for organising parties, Gian is quiet, humble and let’s his riding do the talking, equally as capable in deep powder or street, he’s guided by a tasteful eye on spot and trick selection. Off the mountain, you’ll find Gian colliding cultures, studying graphic design, and blurring the lines between graphics, fashion, board sports and photography. With this year’s Escape Cup fast approaching, we decided to give the man himself a call to talk the joys of small resorts, creative outlets, expectations, homie crews and more!

Give us a little background on yourself.

My name is Gian. I'm from Switzerland. I grew up in Zurich, and I'm 26 years old. I'm a snowboarder most of my time, but I am also part-time studying and have some summer jobs in between. I like to spend my time doing all sorts of boarding; snowboarding, skateboarding, surfing, and above all try to be creative. Study-wise, I started studying graphic design – I love to take photos and various other creative outlets.

Talk us through your journey in snowboarding?  

So I grew up near Zurich, which is not fully in the mountains, but luckily enough, my parents are big skiers and mountaineers, so they took me and my two sisters skiing from a really young age, and that's how I got in touch with snowboarding for the first time, when I was six years old, and I just saw people doing tricks on snowboards, and I guess at the time I thought that was really cool.

So that's where I tried it for the first time, and then later on, I started doing competitions around Switzerland, and kind of got into the whole national team etc, and did compete in slopestyle and halfpipe. Eventually I slowly transitioned into filming, starting with friends and was lucky enough to get picked up by some sponsors, including Vans. That really gave me the spark to make the shift to just only focus on filming parts and that's where I'm at now.

Talk us through your local scene?

After I finished high school, I moved to Laax for the winters, or I spent four winter seasons back-to-back in Laax, and that's where we would snowboard all together. Right around 2016, we started our homie crew called Escape, my good homies who I snowboard and go on trips with. And most of them would stay or are from around Laax too. So I would consider this my local, even though I don't live there permanently.

However I guess it's a bit of a mix, since I live in Zurich now, and there's a lot of people around, friends skating, and passing through but then all my snowboard friends during summers, we're all in the city.

Give us a recap of what you have been up to this season?

I've been focusing on this video project, for Salomon snowboards. It's the first winter of a two year project. We started this winter to film for it, and had a couple of cool trips, both backcountry and street - that has been my main focus so far. I got the chance to make a graphic with Salomon, which is coming out next fall, which we are making a little promo video for, and maybe a little trip in May…

The past few weeks, at the end of the winter I’ve had a lot of organizing for the event that we do in Laax for the Escape Closing Cup.

Favourite places to ride outside of Laax?

A lot of my snowboarding inspiration comes from skateboarding and making things. So I like a lot of really small resorts that exist in Scandinavia and in the States, especially Minnesota - small hills where the crew stays close together, you see your friends laughing, you get inspiration from them, and it just feels really easy going. Then, obviously we have amazing mountains in Switzerland and a lot of cool, small resorts as well.

You’ve been described as a perfectionist when it comes to your tricks…

I've been trying to figure out where that comes from. I feel like going on snowboard trips and filming snowboarding takes a lot of effort, so much time, so much money spent as well. I feel like if I if I'm putting so much work into something, I want to be proud of the outcome and be satisfied with what I’m getting out of it in regards of snowboarding and tricks.

If I put all of this energy and these emotions and time and money into something I want to be as good as I can do it. We're always the harshest critics of our own footage, but in some ways, I feel like it's still something that I want to do only for myself, and I want to be able to look at my footage and be happy with it. So I guess that's where that comes from, just trying to live up to the standards that I have in my mind.

Talk us through the Escape crew?

That all started with my homie, Lou. He's the filmer and editor that makes all the Escape videos, he's a couple years older than most of the other Escape guys. He was part of another Swiss crew called Mindset Productions, and they eventually stopped doing videos.  Myself, together with some other friends, we had an had a little homie crew that was called Cozy Cluster when we were super young.

That was the moment where we made our first videos, then eventually when the older guys stopped making videos, Lou decided to kind of start his own crew, and asked us, the younger generation, to be part of it - that's how it all started. Since then, we’ve filmed seven seasons and put out six or so videos.

What kind of program are you running during the off-season?

So right now, I'm studying next to snowboarding. A lot of time in summer or spring, my life is based on my schooling and trying to make up all the missed classes in the winter or missed projects… Other than that, a lot of skateboarding, surfing and taking photos. I really like to be around the city in the summer and go swim and hang out with friends,

Do you feel your studies in design overlap with snowboarding?

There's some similarities of course - projects are never really done, like either filming a part or doing a poster for an event, you could always do more, and at some point you just have to figure out the vision and what you want to do, what you want to create, what you want to stand for.

I think there’s also a strong crossover with the collision of the visual language of snowboarding - magazines and video projects with titles or graphics on products.

What and who inspires you in snowboarding?

Mostly my close friends, going on trips with them and seeing all the effort that they put in, whether that was with all the homies from Escape, or now filming for Salomon, seeing all the effort that people put in, that's a huge inspiration and gets me motivated as well. I also watch a ton of videos - I grew up watching Videograss and Postland Theory. In terms of names that inspire me, Kas Lemmens, Jake Kuzyk and Arthur Longo are a few that really resonate with me.

How do you feel the contemporary skate, surf and snow as well as wider youth cultures collide?

I feel like skating and surfing are the cultures that maybe a bit tighter than what they were before. For me, since I'm doing both, it's cool, to merge them and watch them collide, now I have a couple friends from skating are super into snowboarding and watch snowboard videos, which is super cool to see. I guess a lot of inspiration just comes from videos, I feel like skateboarding is just more urban and more up to date and on trend! I feel like snowboarding is always a little later than what's happening in the big cities and in bigger communities so we are forced to seek inspiration from the wider scene – skating, music, fashion etc. It’s a big inspiration for me to see the new trends come up, and then try to take that into snowboarding.

Favourite Vans boot to ride in?

Right now - it's the Verse it fits my feet really well - I've been riding in the Verse a bunch. I really like the look of the just the High Standard OG a lot too.

Any last words? A message for the internet? A message to your former self…

What I love about all of this is the community that comes with it and all the friends that I get to meet on the way. I do think it's really valuable to realise those connections and to cherish those moments together that we all share and connect on different levels.

It’s something to not forget, why we do what we do.