Italian luxury brand Moncler takes fashion from ski slopes to sunny
SingaporeTee Hun ChingThursday, Nov 05, 2015
A down jacket is probably the last thing anyone living in sunny Singapore
would think of buying. Yet to Moncler, a brand synonymous with posh puffer coats
that start from $1,600, it makes perfect sense to set up shop here.
"People there travel a lot and there are a lot of tourists," explained Mr
Remo Ruffini, 54, its chairman, chief executive and creative director. He met
Life in Tokyo, where Moncler opened a two-storey flagship store in upscale Ginza
two weeks ago.
Its first South-east Asian outpost, unveiled at Ion Orchard on Sept 14, is
officially launched today.
The self-possessed Italian with a mop of curly hair recounted how he was
taken with Singapore's dynamism and strategic location during a stopover here in
November 2013. "It's a city with strong energy. It's very international and it's
a financial hub in Asia," he said.
Fashion insiders here share his optimism. Singapore Fashion Week chairman
Tjin Lee, 42, said: "Singapore is a metropolitan city with more visitors a year
than residents. An international brand like Moncler that offers lifestyle wear
could do well all year round."
While the store here is not expected to be a cash cow by any stretch of the
imagination, it adds value as a gateway to the region for the Italian luxury
brand with French roots.
"Opening a Moncler store in a place where there is no winter is not easy," Mr
Ruffini conceded. "But it is very important for Moncler to be in the right
place, to have a relationship with a very important market."
While the company declines to give figures, it says the 115 sq m Singapore
outlet, where prices start from $260 for a cap, is "performing well and met all
expectations".
If things go according to plan, Moncler may open another store here, possibly
at Marina Bay Sands, said Mr Ruffini.
Founded in 1952 in the French city of Grenoble by two Alpine climbers, the
label started off providing mountaineering gear such as tents and sleeping
bags.
It began producing down jackets two years later and grew in fame when it
dressed the French ski team for the 1968 Winter Olympics in Grenoble.
French and Italian teens helped burnish Moncler's style cred when they took
to wearing its ski jackets as a fashion statement in the 1980s. By the turn of
the new millennium, however, its appeal had waned.
Enter Mr Ruffini, who cut his teeth in the fashion business by running the
American operations of his father's menswear company, Gianfranco Ruffini, and
later set up his own men's shirt label called New England.
He was then consulting as a creative director at Fin.Part, a now- defunct
holding company that owned Moncler and a few other smaller brands. With Fin.Part
on the brink of bankruptcy, he acquired Moncler in 2003.
His emotional ties with the brand stretch back to his teenage years: At 14,
he coaxed his mother into buying him one of its coveted jackets.
With him at the helm, the once faltering Moncler is now a retail star. Listed
in Milan, the company was the most successful European stock-market flotation of
2013, after its shares shot up nearly 50 per cent on the first day of trading.
It turned Mr Ruffini, who owns a one-third stake,
short ombre hairstyles, into a billionaire overnight.
Last year, revenues jumped by 20 per cent to €694 million (S$1.06 billion).
The label now has 185 stores around the world, up from about 120 two years
ago.
Mr Ruffini attributes the success to Moncler's focus on its best-selling
jackets, which reportedly make up 85 per cent of its sales.
He told The Wall Street Journal last year: "I'm not Giorgio Armani or Miuccia
Prada. I focus on a single product. Not a style - a product."
Each jacket is made from scratch in Italy and every component, from new
zippers to top-grade nylon, is made exclusively by or for the company, which has
invested heavily in research and development since Mr Ruffini took over the
reins. For example, its down jackets now come in novel fabrics such as wool and
tweed.
Naturally, this dedication to quality and innovation comes at a premium. At
the Ion Orchard store, prices for its quilted jackets range from about $1,600
for a basic style to about $4,000 for fancier designs, such as those trimmed
with fur.
Combining keen business acumen with an equally sharp eye for fashion, Mr
Ruffini has picked avant-garde design talent such as Junya Watanabe to produce
capsule collections over the years.
These add to the cachet of the Moncler brand and push it beyond the ski
slopes and plant stores in cities from Hamburg to Honolulu to Hong Kong.
In 2006, it launched Moncler Gamme Rouge, a top-end women's line that is now
helmed by Italian designer Giambattista Valli. It fulfilled Mr Ruffini's vision
to "create down jackets so elegant that women would wear them to La Scala",
referring to the opera house in Milan.
A men's range, called Moncler Gamme Bleu and designed by American Thom
Browne, followed in 2009, while Grenoble, a more innovative technical range for
men and women, made its debut in 2010.
All are known for staging spectacular catwalk shows at the various fashion
weeks that turn heads and, more importantly, generate buzz.
Still, Mr Ruffini insists he prizes substance over style.
"We are not very keen to be in the fashion system. We try to make products
that last for years and a product that lasts for years cannot be very
fashion-oriented."
His own favourite Moncler down jacket, for instance, is one made of wool that
he got at least 10 years ago. "It's the one I use every time in the mountains,"
said the father of two sons in their 20s, who splits his time between Milan,
where Moncler's head office is, and Como, where he was born.
An avid sportsman, he is known to sail in summer and head for the pistes in
winter.
Elaborating on his business philosophy, he added: "If a customer is satisfied
with your product that lasts for years, the relationship you have with him is
very strong.
"This is a good strategy, more so than to have customers come to your store
four, five times a year, but then become bored with the brand."
Photo: Moncler
Posh and playful
The usually sleek and chic Moncler jacket is getting a cheeky makeover.
Whimsical Los Angeles artist duo FriendsWithYou have pepped up the Italian
label's down-filled outerwear with their trademark exuberant colours and playful
icons in a new capsule collection.
An exclusive preview of the range, which includes T-shirts, sweatshirts,
sneakers and bags, was held at the new Moncler flagship in Tokyo's Ginza
district on Oct 24. It will be rolled out to all other Moncler stores next year
for the 2016 fall/winter season.
Mr Remo Ruffini, the luxury label's chairman, chief executive and creative
director,
blonde lace front wigs, said of the collection: "I realised we
needed something younger, something much more pop, something with humour. I
thought FriendsWithYou would be interesting for that."
While some market watchers and investors might be concerned that Moncler's
business revolves around one product that is worn mainly during one season each
year - its quilted winter jacket - Mr Ruffini has been cleverly tapping new
markets and turbocharging the brand through canny collaborations over the
years.
The diverse brands and personalities Moncler has worked with include storied
French fashion house Balenciaga, cult Japanese brand Mastermind Japan, German
luxury luggage maker Rimowa and American singer-songwriter Pharrell
Williams.
In September, Canada-born designer Erdem Moralioglu unveiled a limited tie-up
collection that some critics lauded as both dramatic and romantic.
FriendsWithYou,
celebrity wigs, known for their fantastical large-scale
installations bursting with bright hues and inflatable shapes, inject a markedly
different flavour.
Samuel Borkson, 36, one-half of the artist duo, said: "I was excited that we
could do something very high-end and also very playful. I thought if we could
mix the two nicely, we would have reached our goal."
There were limitations to the medium, though, said his other working half,
Arturo Sandoval III, 39. "There's just so much you can do with jackets and
stuff," the father of one noted. "But the freedom comes from Moncler wanting to
apply our iconography. They were very open to us sharing a wide range of
things."
There is Cloudy the white puffy cloud; Happy Virus the yellow smiley face;
Malfi the penguin; Mr TTT, a fluorescent pill-shaped rainbow; a pair of googly
eyes named Look Who Is Talking; and the roly-poly Snowman.
These kawaii pop-art motifs are showcased to best effect on the reversible
down jackets. One side features a single patch of an icon, while the other sees
the same motif plastered all over, as if with unbridled glee.
The contrast sums up neatly the marriage between Moncler's stealth-wealth
aesthetics and FriendsWithYou's brand of accessible art that makes one
smile.
"It's wearable art that is fun," Borkson pronounced with a grin.
stlife..sg
This article was first published on November 5, 2015.
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