Moncler’s link ups with Hiroshi Fujiwara’s FRGMT have never missed, and their most recent drop only provides more proof of why. Following up from the collection’s slick debut during The City of Genius show in Shanghai last October — set within the art installation Looking Glass, 2024, by the internationally renowned British sculptor Richard Wilson RA — is its arrival in stores for you to finally add to your daily rotation, and they are all black and oozing with charisma.
Not the charisma you would expect of pieces in the safest, foolproof shade to wear everyday, because these are only meant for the everyday by deception. Go up close and you will notice the way this menswear collection brings functionality and technical expertise to a whole new level, maintained within the context of subcultural niches and deep, yet still, black.
Found in both matte and shiny finishes, the sporty nylon parkas and varsity jackets tap into Americana silhouettes, while car coats and workwear jackets tap into British sensibilities. Classic Moncler signifiers like a new grid-quilted boudin are revisited in lighter-weight iterations, the iconic Maya2 and Everest2 jackets for example reworked for spring as pieces that are ‘50% lighter’.
All of the pieces boast the marvels of deft construction, numerical graphics, artisanal embroidered touches, and hyper-playful Y2K graphics. These graphics in particular, a staple element of Fujiwara’s design vocabulary, range from ornamental to profound; the sheer range of references showing the lack of limits of where the polymath finds inspiration. While embossed logos and numerical codes add the dimension of technicality to the aesthetic of the garments, cartoon kitten and bunny creations by viral Korean illustration studio Nayeon & Rang make light of the embroidered philosophical quotes like Nietzsche’s ‘Without music, life would be a mistake’ and Aristotle’s ‘There is no great genius without some touch of madness’ — no life lesson too serious for the younger folk.
Once you are done with this story, click here to catch up with our February 2025 issue.