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Moncler took to the mountains on Saturday night to host its first show dedicated to Grenoble, its technical outerwear line.
Around 300 guests, including Kate Moss, Anne Hathaway, director Paolo Sorrentino and snowboarder Shaun White, descended on the St Moritz forest in Switzerland wearing white capes and hats equipped with individual headphones. Irina Shayk, Mariacarla Boscono and Emily Ratajkowski were among the models walking down the snowy runway. The show comprised some 135 looks (91 plus 44 models who joined only for the finale) with plenty of embroidery, jacquards for women and cleaner, more quiet looks for men. There was no fur, as Moncler has been fur-free since Autumn/Winter 2023. Instead, it’s wool or synthetic trims, long or short hair shearling.
“St Moritz is one of my favourite places in the world, my second home. It’s quite important also for Moncler. We opened the first store worldwide here more than 20 years ago, and the first Moncler Grenoble store two months ago,” Moncler S.p.A. chairman and chief executive Remo Ruffini told editors during a press briefing on Friday.
The show was preceded by a cocktail party the evening before, held at the new Moncler Grenoble store, which opened in December as the first flagship dedicated to the collection.
The weekend was spent in service of a greater plan to grow the Grenoble business. At Moncler’s Capital Markets Day in May 2022, Ruffini announced a new strategy for the brand based on three pillars: Moncler Collection, the main offering; Moncler Genius, a collaboration-based model launched in 2018; and Moncler Grenoble, its technical line rooted in the mountain heritage of the brand. He said Grenoble (launched in 2010) would be rebooted, covering all aspects of mountain life, from high performance to après-ski and various outdoor experiences all year long.
Since acquiring Moncler in 2003, Ruffini — a second-generation fashion entrepreneur — has redesigned his strategy every couple of years. “Today, we base our strategy on three dimensions,” he explained. Past focus was put on the Moncler Collection, with the 70th-anniversary spectacle in Piazza Duomo in September 2022, followed by Genius, with a blockbuster performance in London in February 2023 and a line-up of collaborations with the likes of Pharrell Williams and Jay-Z. “Now is the time of Grenoble,” Ruffini said.
“In terms of perception, my dream is to balance the three collections — Collection, Genius and Grenoble — at the same level,” Ruffini said.
Moncler Collection currently accounts for the most sales, he said, though the company doesn’t break out exact figures across its divisions. At Capital Markets Day in 2022, the company said the 2025 target for Moncler Collection is 70 per cent of total revenue. According to HSBC’s global head of consumer and retail research, Erwan Rambourg, Grenoble accounts for “a high single-digit percentage of sales but has the potential to increase to mid-teens eventually”. In 2023, the Moncler brand is expected to have reached €2.5 billion in 2023, up from €2.2 billion in 2022, according to HSBC.
Outerwear and skiwear, in particular, have been on the rise since the Covid-19 pandemic, with a number of luxury brands entering the market, most recently Balenciaga, Loro Piana and Brunello Cucinelli. Skiwear is a crowded category, between specialist brands like Fusalp and Bogner, newcomers like Sease, the Italian outerwear brand founded by Franco and Giacomo Loro Piana and fashion megabrands.
The category is showing no sign of slowdown. “Despite warmer weather at the start of the ski season, demand has been extremely strong, posting double-digit growth season to date,” says Richard Johnson, chief commercial officer at Mytheresa. “Many luxury brands are moving into ski, and there is real customer interest at higher price points for designers that combine their luxury attitude with the technicality of the product…Moncler Grenoble is well positioned in this respect as the brand was born in the mountains, and customers trust that it will deliver under all weather conditions.”
Moncler Grenoble’s strategy includes geographic expansion. Asia is on the radar. “I personally love [ski resort] Niseko in Japan. We don’t have anything in the pipeline, but it’s only my dream,” he said. He pointed to Northern China as another possibility.
The strategy also involves developing the offer for all year round. “Everything outdoor, biking, hiking is super, super strong, not only in Europe but in America and in China as well,” Ruffini noted. The brand will continue to focus efforts on communications and events for Moncler Grenoble. Its latest campaign features snowboarders Shaun White and Xuetong Cai, mogul skier Perrine Laffont, and freeride skier Richard Permin. “Energy for a brand is everything,” he said.
“When we went public more than 10 years ago [in 2013], our logo was to ‘Survive Fashion’ and to survive fashion, I think Grenoble is very important.”
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