Before it was a luxurious global ski destination, Aspen, Colorado was a cowboy town – a place where ranchers would drive cattle through mountain terrain and where horsemen could put their skills to the test astride a bucking bronco.
That’s the unbridled spirit that Moncler aimed to capture with its A/W 2026 Moncler Grenoble collection, the Italian outerwear brand’s high-performance ski-wear arm. The collection, unveiled Saturday evening with a runway presentation set in a snowy mountain basin just outside Aspen, married technical expertise, alpine heritage and Western swagger.
Moncler takes over Aspen for latest Moncler Grenoble show
Though Moncler was founded outside Grenoble, France and is now based in Italy, it shares a few intriguing commonalities with Aspen. Moncler was founded in 1952, just as the small Colorado town was evolving into a world-class ski resort. Aspen, meanwhile, was settled by immigrants from the Aosta Valley in Northern Italy, just two hours north of Moncler’s Milan headquarters. As Moncler CEO and chairman Remo Ruffini put it, the pairing was a ‘match made in the mountains’.
No surprise, the majesty of the Colorado Rockies was the protagonist in both the collection and a weekend of festivities. Moncler is known for its spectacular en plein air shows (last year, models navigated an impromptu snowstorm while walking down a landing strip in Courchevel, France) but the Aspen edition seemingly upped the ante. After a day of skiing, some 350 guests – which consisted of international editors, friends of the brand and celebrities like Adrian Brody, Emily Ratajkowski, Jennie Kim and Sean White – were whisked by snowmobile up to snowy clearing, facing a grove of the region’s namesake Aspen trees.
Under the glow of a nearly-full moon and ethereal projections, models emerged from the forest and navigated an undulating landscape of moguls. The 95 looks encompassed both high-performance apparel as well as sophisticated après-ski ensembles, but, from the first swell of Ennio Morricone’s ‘The Ecstasy of Gold,’ there was no mistake that this collection was firmly rooted in the mystique of the Wild West.
There were swingy fringe skirts, calico frocks and coats, traditional plaids, cozy shearling collars and, of course, plenty of cowboy hats. Even technical fabrics, meant for speeding down vertiginous slopes, got on-the-ranch touches like Western-style piping. There were more literal nods to the setting too, as with a cape featuring an abstract Aspen map or snowboarding jackets depicting whimsical mountain scenes. Most pleasing were the elegant jacquards, found in skirts and jackets, featuring the raised heart-shaped silhouettes of Aspen leaves.
After the presentation’s finale, illuminated by beams of light pointed skyward, guests were escorted to the T-Lazy-7 Ranch lodge, a rustic pile decked out with exposed timber beams, fieldstone and plenty of taxidermy, to dance the night away to a live bluegrass band and a DJ set.
The decision to hold the Moncler Grenoble A/W 2026 presentation stateside is a savvy one; according to one analysis, the US ski apparel market is projected to double by 2033 and capture the largest chunk of the global ski market. Moncler is more than poised to meet the surge in demand; the weekend also saw the opening of a dedicated Moncler Grenoble store in Aspen, one of just two brick-and-mortar locations in the world.
The collection also spoke to an aesthetic popularised by Yellowstone, the wildly popular neo-Western TV series. (Kevin Costner – who owns a ranch in the area – was also fittingly among the A-listers). Clearly Moncler, to borrow a cowboy phrase, is out to make hay while the sun shines.
