In 1982, Millie Merrill designed the first fleece neck warmer in the basement of the Yellow Turtle, a children’s apparel store in Stowe, Vermont. Affectionately dubbed The Turtle’s Neck®, it was a design shift in winter accessories that proves successful to this day. The invention of the Original Turtle's Neck freed once scarf-bound skiers from their tangled and burdensome accessories. This invention also led her to found Turtle Fur, with headquarters now in Morrisville, Vermont.
From The Neck was born The Hat, from The Hat, many more hats. With her husband John, who joined Turtle Fur officially in 1991, the company grew, introducing new products and growing the team. They retired in 2000, and Millie can still be found on the slopes of Mt Mansfield. Today, we carry forward the values Millie embodied - moxie and grit, a sense of adventure and a driving purpose to leave things better than we found them.
