High in the Alps With Moncler Grenoble and Vincent Cassel

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17-03-2025

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Quick question: Who's the most stylish French actor alive today? The correct answer: Vincent Cassel. The 58-year-old is one of those impossibly cool French actors in the vein of Alain Delon and Jean-Paul Belmondo. His most notable English-language credits include Eastern Promises, Oceans Twelve and Oceans Thirteen, and the HBO series Westworld. But long before he was appearing in America cinemas, Cassel was making movies in France and winning awards along the way. (Watch his 1996 movie L'Appartement.) He's also a darling of the fashion world, having appeared in campaigns for Prada and Saint Laurent and walked in a fashion show for the French brand Ami. Today, he's an icon.
Last weekend, I was at the French ski resort Courchevel, where the Italian brand Moncler staged a fashion show for its Fall/Winter 2025 Grenoble line. It was a weekend of festivities that included a boozy lunch at the restaurant Bagatelle atop one of the ski mountains. One of the guests weaving his way through the tables caught my attention, because he looked stylish as hell. This was Vincent Cassel. We should all be so lucky to look as good as him in our 50s.
The fashion show took place later that night on the runway of Courchevel's airport (technically it's an "altiport"), the highest in Europe at more than 6,500 feet above sea level. For someone coming from sea level, it takes at least half a day to shake off the splitting headache and nausea of altitude sickness. The airport is famous for not only the altitude—and the hair-raising landings—but also its place in movie history. The opening scene of the James Bond film, Tomorrow Never Dies, was shot at the airport. As far as I can tell, Moncler staged the first-ever fashion show there.
Fitting for a label that specializes in high-end ski and outerwear, the show included a heavy snow shower that blanketed the models, orchestra, and audience—which included Adrien Brody, Jessica Chastain, Anne Hathaway, Shaun White, Chloe Kim, Penn Badgley, and Cassel. After Cassel arrived, I stopped him and asked what his secret is for looking so stylish on the slopes. He seemed to find the question amusing.
'I'm more of a beach guy,' he told me. 'I don't really ski a lot, but I still remember how to do it.' Okay, not exactly an answer, but he continued: 'Listen, as a kid, when I used to ski, I wore Moncler. It was one of those brands that was everywhere. And then it kind of faded away, and then it came back. And now it's like a phoenix—it's bigger than ever.'
Indeed, Moncler is bigger than ever. It's a publicly traded company in Italy with a market capitalization of more than 17 billion euros, or $18.5 billion. In 2003, the Italian businessman Remo Ruffini bought the company and since then its profile—and stock price—has risen sharply. Last year, it held a fashion show for its Grenoble line on a mountainside in the swanky Swiss ski town St. Moritz.
Grenoble is a famous ski destination in France, as well as the name of Moncler's skiwear collection. The clothes are technical, meaning they serve a function and do it well (namely, suiting you up for a cold day on a mountain). But its hallmark is that you can also wear these clothes off the mountain—even in the city. I own this coat from the brand, and it's gotten far more use on the streets of New York than on any ski mountain. It certainly kept me warm during the brand's fashion show 6,500 feet above sea level.
It's a coat even a beach guy could pull off.
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