Issue link: https://www.balharbourdigital.com/i/86796
Down from the Mountain find a home on the streets. BY WILLIAM KISSEL PORTRAIT BY MILAN VUKMIROVIC When Italian entrepreneur Remo Ruffini acquired the struggling Moncler label in 2003, he dreamed of transforming the utilitarian jacket maker into a global luxury brand in which the French company's signature goose down feather linings could be used for more than just fighting the arctic chill. Now, with the opening of the first Moncler shop at Bal Harbour, the firm's cold weather designs are getting their first warm welcome. "Moncler has always been very classic—functional but in many ways all about sport, particularly ski. So the goal was to make something more contemporary and 'of the moment,'" says Ruffini, who enlisted the services of a handful of international designers—from Nicolas Ghesquière and Junya Watanabe to Giambattista Valli and Thom Browne—to collectively transform his vision of "the global down jacket" into a red hot fashion label identifiable by its distinctive red, white and blue logo, picturing MonDuck, the brand's iconic duck character, behind twin mountain peaks. Together they created a series of fashion-forward, street-worthy collections— including Gamme Rouge and Gamme Bleu, as well as the updated Grenoble ski line—to bring an element of cool (as in hip) to a younger generation. More recently Ruffini launched a line of eyewear through Mykita and a joint partnership with Pharrell Williams, the clothing designer and Grammy-winning music producer, as part of the brand's global expansion beyond outerwear. The idea, says Ruffini, is "to expand our collections to address the daily demands of contemporary life. It doesn't have to be just for the ski slopes; it can also be for a man to wear over a suit to the office or even a woman to wear to the opera." Moncler's feather-weight ski designs Remo Ruffini 72 BAL HARBOUR