View From the Top

After years of highs on the slopes and the streets, Moncler is launching a customizing program. Emma Elwick-Bates tries it on for size.

The gleaming slopes are perfectly poised for self-expression, a blank canvas for show-off freestylers, schussing snowboarders—and, of course, a great showcase for medal-worthy style feats. My early attempts at ski style were formulated on trips to Sweden on school breaks when my sisters and I lavished zinc oxide rainbows over our faces the deft color play” of Pat McGrath it was not).

But the ultimate ski staple—a trusty down jacket—has, along the way, become a mainstay of the workaday winter, and so much more: As temperatures drop, I wear mine bundled with knits and track pants on the whippet walk, or thrown over Saint Laurent cocktail minis and barely-there blouses for evening. And while we may have loathed athleisure as a fashion hype word, it did give us all license to throw a jaunty sleeping bag over anything and get away with it—for a while. While down jackets are cozy on the inside, they can come off as a little dire from the outside.)

But with a ski trip planned for early 2023—to regain my alpine confidence after a long hiatus—I’ve been thinking: What to wear now? Something individual, yes, away from the identikit-Instagram crew—but since I’m not in the practice of relegating my skiwear merely to annual trips, I want something that plays well on the off-piste of home soil, too. Enter Moncler, the luxury outerwear label with its roots in the mountain village of Monestier-de-Clermont, after which it is named, but equally at home in music videos and the metropolis; its new bespoke personalization service, Moncler By Me, launches online and at Moncler stores this month in Manhattan, Paris, Milan, and Tokyo.