Opening a store is not only a business opportunity, it can also be a dream realized.
So it is for Remo Ruffini, executive chairman of the Moncler Group.
“I’ve always had a strong connection with New York, my father lived in the city for years starting from 1968 and I used to visit often, as a child marveling at the size of everything, compared to Italy. I was impressed, it was all new, big and unexpected,” said Ruffini, ahead of the opening of Moncler’s biggest flagship in the world Thursday.
He acknowledged he’d been looking to open a store in New York for many years and the ideal location in his mind was precisely the one he succeeded in securing. The Fifth Avenue flagship is the former site of FAO Schwarz and, more recently, a temporary Apple store during the renovation of the tech brand’s Fifth Avenue store.
“The location is perfect, between Fifth and Madison Avenues, and to me it’s always been a point of reference over the years,” Ruffini said.
It’s taken three years to restructure the space and Ruffini turned to his go-to design studio for the interiors: Gilles & Boissier.
“We worked together from Day One, on the first store in Paris and I never felt the need to consider anybody else. We are in symbiosis,” he said.
Gilles & Boissier, led by husband-and-wife cofounders and principal interior architects Patrick Gilles and Dorothée Boissier, designed about 250 Moncler locations over more than 20 years, as well as Ruffini’s residence.
The executive admitted the flagship “reflects my own taste,” and said he wanted it to feel like home. “I am interested in offering a connection to the dream of the brand, communicating with our community, fueling the relationship with our customers and expressing our history and strategy,” and he underscored his conviction that “consumers don’t want the same experience around the world.” Accordingly, the flagship is marked by site-specific art works.
Marking the opening, the “New York in Moncler” exhibit of retrospective images, which runs through Sunday, capture the brand’s relationship with the city over two decades, but Ruffini, while admitting “a good performance” in the U.S., said it still offers strong potential. “We are a bit under-penetrated compared to our competitors.”
While precise revenue figures by country are not disclosed, the Americas account for 13.5 percent of total brand revenues.
In the first half, revenues in the Americas increased by 6 percent at constant exchange rates compared with the same period last year, reaching 147 million euros. In the second quarter, revenues in the region rose 4 percent year-on-year, supported by the continued solid performance of the direct-to-consumer channel, which benefited from robust local consumption.
As of June 30, Moncler counted 298 directly operated stores, a net increase of three units compared to the end of March. In the Americas, Moncler operates 54 boutiques. In the U.S., the number is approximately 35 stores.
Ruffini did not dismiss working with department stores and wholesale accounts, despite changes in the scenario. “It’s true that the channel has been going through turmoils and there are fewer specialty stores, but we still believe in wholesale, and I don’t think there is any cannibalization with the opening of the flagship. The customers are different.”
Asked about working with the Exemplar Luxury Group, formerly Saks Global, he expressed confidence in chief executive officer Geoffroy van Raemdonck, describing him as “serious, credible and capable of exceptional work.
“The U.S. market is increasingly important for luxury, it joins together different cultures, and there is a strong energy. The macro situation may be more confused, but I look at Moncler and there is room to grow,” Ruffini continued.
With his management, while leveraging the strength of its history and the tradition of winter wear, he has long aimed at developing the brand’s offer as a yearlong proposition. The Americans’ passion for the mountains outside of the winter months, he said, is an additional positive note. On the other hand, New York’s cold winters, he said smiling, will help sell.
Indeed, the store also carries Moncler Grenoble, the luxury high-performance mountain collection. Incidentally, while the brand has been shown in locations such as Aspen most recently — another sign of the company’s interest in the U.S. — and in Saint Moritz and Courchevel, France, its first collection was presented in New York at Chelsea Piers in January 2010 during New York Fashion Week.
Right off the flagship’s main Fifth Avenue entrance, the impression is of a true flagship — massive, distinct, experiential, yet not really transactional.
With its expansive atrium, 26-foot-high ceiling and formidable black granite-textured glass columns, the two-level, 23,680-square-foot flagship exudes verticality and depth.
The flagship was designed in classic, enfilade-style architecture, with a long central hall and an organized series of framed “salons” on the sides. The interior provides a sense of discovery, reminiscent of exploring the galleries of a museum. With its generous spacing, there’s freedom of movement for easy viewing and for grasping the essence of Moncler — a luxury brand blending high fashion and functionality.
The ground floor of the Fifth Avenue flagship houses the men’s, women’s and children’s designs from the Moncler Collection, as well as the Moncler Genius collection, and footwear including the collaboration with Clarks. In the men’s area are two tall columns of textured glass suggesting a frozen waterfall.
Deeper into the store and down a short flight of stairs, there’s women’s outerwear, often shown with blouses, knits, skirts and headwear, to encourage outfitting and layering, and to underscore that Moncler is not purely outerwear, though sometimes it’s mistakenly perceived as such.
Women’s is housed in an open-floor plan for a different shopping experience than the more compartmentalized character of the men’s section.
Some iconic pieces are displayed for public presentation, not consumption, like the opulent, floor-length puffer coat from the 1 Moncler Pierpaolo Piccioli fall 2019 collection worn by Sarah Jessica Parker in “And Just Like That,” the series sequel to “Sex and the City.” It stands alone in its own space, as does an elaborate outfit consisting of a crinoline dress, windbreaker and puffer bonnet, from the Moncler x EE72 by Edward Enninful collection for Moncler’s City of Genius immersive exhibit during Shanghai Fashion Week in 2024. Genius is Moncler’s platform for designers, artists and cultural figures to collaborate on capsule collections.
Adding to the aura of discovery, there’s the “Cabine Curiosité” with a large screen projecting images from the “New York in Moncler” campaign featuring photographs by Annie Leibovitz as well as scenes of Moncler events and fashion shows at such landmarks as Grand Central Terminal, Lincoln Center and Central Park.
The “New York in Moncler” exhibit is currently up at Grand Central Terminal, and to further trumpet the flagship opening, Moncler ads are on bus shelters and other structures.
There’s a “LoveFrom by Sir Jony Ive” assortment of novelty items exclusive to the store, including patches depicting a vinyl record, a big apple, and the Moncler bear mascot ascending the Empire State Building, as well as postcards and other New York City-related items.
“I have great respect for Jony, he is the designer of the modern era,” Ruffini said. In 2024, Moncler launched an outerwear collection in collaboration with Apple’s Ive and his LoveFrom collective formed with Marc Newson.
The flagship introduces a “Moncler-to-Measure” service enabling customers to personalize styles with embellishments, fabrications and details of their choice, and by adjusting lengths. It’s about a six- to eight-month period from initially deciding on changes to receiving the finished, customized product.
Throughout the flagship are nods to Moncler’s alpine mountain roots, through special design elements, fixtures and works of art, such as the “waterfall” lights encased in thick frosted glass suspended from the ceiling, and the commanding Ugo Rondinone sculpture of three huge stones, stacked and colored.
Additional works by Paul Bik, Arno Declercq and Jean Guillaume Mathiaut contribute to the museum character, and as Ruffini said, “the artists are linked to our history, and their works blur the boundaries between retail, architecture and cultural experience.”
Black-stained wood screens, created by artist Matthieu Naab, are like monuments helping define part of the space.
There are also nods to New York City. For example, the facade is framed in glass and animated by integrated LED strips to suggest the intensity of Times Square, and the columns are designed to suggest Manhattan’s skyscraper skyline.
The second floor houses Moncler’s Grenoble collection of high performance yet fashionable year-round mountain and outdoor offering for men and women. The collection also offers après ski styles. Moncler Grenoble is the fastest-growing dimension within the Moncler brand. While Moncler Grenoble collections are distributed through the majority of Moncler stores worldwide, it currently has two dedicated boutiques, in Saint Moritz and Aspen.
Also on two, there’s a bar, event space and a private suite with leather and suede furnishings and sliding doors as you might see in a posh Paris residence, for clients working with personal shoppers, or perhaps a respite from shopping. Fitting rooms are designed like private suites.
“For us, the first thing we have in mind when designing a store is the first impression, the first sensation,” Boissier said. “We always want the visitor to feel something strong when they enter a store. This is why we pay particular attention to the entrance of each location. It can sometimes have a very distinctive design that echoes the city in which it is located. In Paris, for example, it is the impressive limestone entrance with its Versailles-inspired marble floor. In Milan, it is the original moulding of the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II.
“Here, at the Moncler Fifth Avenue store, the visitor enters an impressive double-height space. The first impression is truly spectacular. The visitor is immediately struck by the grandeur of the space,” she continued. “This is particularly interesting because, after leaving Fifth Avenue and its large buildings, you enter a new environment — an interior architecture with a different scale, yet one that remains equally grand. What is most important to us is that the visitor can immediately feel the spirit and history of Moncler. This is especially true when entering such an iconic house as Moncler: its identity, its history and its DNA must be felt through every architectural detail and become a physical manifestation of these intangible elements.”
While the atrium soars 26 feet high, “you can find this horizontal scale through the sense of perspective discovered upon first entering. We created architectural elements that create depth, regularity and perfect symmetry that in the end echo a library or an archive room,” Gilles said. “In the back of the space, we took advantage of the ceiling height to create a more intimate space with the bar and the private VIP salon that is conceived like a Parisian apartment. This allowed us to create a sensational entry with strong emotion and to then bring the visitor to a more intimate and reserved space, introducing them to a different idea of scale, of grandeur, and playing with different perspectives to create a true inner journey in the boutique. We like the fact that the visitor will feel different, almost opposite, emotions as they explore, avoiding a sense of passivity.”