On Tuesday in Milan, Canadian luxury outerwear brand Moose Knuckles turned its flagship into a journey from summit to city for the unveiling of its Fall/Winter 2026 collection. A nine-foot mountain anchored the space, surrounded by the brand’s signature heavyweight parkas, which gradually gave way to lighter layers — denim, leather and a newly assertive womenswear focus. Mannequins stood along a road leading to a cityscape printed on the walls, behind a banquet table stacked with bread and a gleaming mountain sculpted entirely from butter.
It was the first collection designed by new creative director Ludovico Bruno, who quietly joined the brand in February. Bruno is best known for his work as head designer of Moncler Genius between 2013 and 2023. He later joined New Guards Group to oversee design direction at Tokyo-based avant garde brand Ambush, and is also founder and creative director of menswear technical label Mordecai. At Moose Knuckles, he joins CEO Ellen Kinney, who was appointed in May. Together, they’re setting a new course to push the irreverent Canadian brand beyond cold-weather down coats and into a broader, fashion-forward lifestyle proposition.
Heavyweight level 4 Canada Cold down jackets (which are engineered for temperatures ranging from -20°C to -30°C) have driven the majority of the business since Moose Knuckles burst onto the scene in 2009 and scaled rapidly (the company declined to share any recent financial information). “My vision is to bring versatility into the conversation,” says Bruno on a call ahead of the event. “It’s utilitarian with a twist — the technicality and quality are there, but we can push the brand into a new direction so we can dress the customer from morning to night in every location.”
The focus is on developing more products across what Moose Knuckles calls level 1 (chilly: for 10°C to 0°C), level 2 (cold: 0°C to -10°C) and level 3 (crazy cold: -10°C to -20°C), while continuing to own the level 4 pillar. “Expanding our DNA in categories such as lightweight down, light shell jackets and knitwear makes sense in the Moose Knuckles world,” says Bruno.
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Kinney adds that there are broadly two buckets: “Streetwear-informed performancewear” and “luxury-informed streetwear”. “We’ll start from the outside in: what are those outerwear pieces our customer wants from us, and what are they wearing underneath them? It’s like working in reverse from a traditional fashion brand.” The expanded assortment with the new design vision will be available from spring 2026.
“While we’re rooted in technical outerwear and have that product integrity, the reason the brand broke through so disruptively was because it had this urban, fashion sensibility and a connection to culture that allows us to expand into other categories,” says Kinney, who moved from Venice Beach to Montréal for the role, bringing expertise in merchandising from her experience leading contemporary brands A.L.C and Kendall + Kylie as CEO and Derek Lam as chief merchant. “All the ingredients are there, it’s about putting the right players into place and some process into place to professionalize the organization to scale.”
With the category blurring between performancewear, streetwear and luxury, and consumers buying fewer but better pieces, the next wave of winners will be those that can merge functional innovation, design authority, wearability and cultural relevance. Moose Knuckles is following a tried-and-tested luxury outerwear playbook: its biggest competitors, Moncler and Canada Goose, have already expanded beyond cold-weather gear into full lifestyle collections as a way to stand out in an increasingly competitive market. The global luxury outerwear market stood at $19.1 billion in 2025 and is set to reach $36.6 billion by 2035, driven by a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 6.72%, according to a report from Business Research Insights.
The challenge is that the luxury outerwear market is dominated by large, publicly traded companies, with strong brand recognition driving pricing power. Luxury performance outerwear can also be capital intensive with complex, pricey production and logistics, meaning that smaller brands face margin pressure that incumbents don’t.
Moose Knuckles was able to disrupt the market by offering a more youthful and edgy attitude in contrast to older competitors (Moncler and Canada Goose were both founded in the 1950s). Former Tapestry CEO Victor Luis made an early minority investment and became CEO in 2021 before handing the reins to Kinney, and remains chair today. Moose Knuckles hired stylist Carlos Nazario as artistic director in 2023, whose contract ended in February 2025. (Canada Goose made a big swing into the fashion world by hiring Haider Ackermann as its first creative director last year, following a suite of luxury collaborations.)
With Kinney and a new creative team at the helm, Moose Knuckles is working on improving the consistency of its brand identity across markets and platforms, while holding onto the rebellious spirit that first set it apart. Kinney says the Moose Knuckles customer is younger than the Moncler and Canada Goose customer, and particularly rooted in urban culture. At the lower end, Moose Knuckles’s products range from $160 for a pair of gloves to $330 for a crewneck cotton sweater to $600 for a lightweight puffer vest. At the upper end, a heavyweight shearling trim down jacket can cost up to £1,600. The prices are generally below the likes of Moncler or Canada Goose, Kinney says. “We’re at the tipping point of the bottom of luxury. We capture a lot of aspirational luxury customers that might not be ready to make the investment in something like a Canada Goose or Moncler. Because we sit below [them], there’s a lot of value with our brand and product,” she says.
To accelerate growth, Moose Knuckles intends to leverage merchandising and marketing to appeal to a fashion-forward audience. Since joining, Kinney has restructured the marketing team and hired new talent across marketing and design (including Bruno and a new design director, Raif Adelberg, who has consulted for brands including Supreme and Comme des Garçons).
While Bruno’s background lends itself well to collaborations (Moncler Genius is a collaborative project featuring collections designed by different guests each season), he emphasizes that the first step for Moose Knuckles is to strengthen the brand’s own identity and cultural relevance. One marketing initiative the company is working on right now is City Guides, a campaign series spotlighting cultural nomads in the cities they move throughout, highlighting hidden gems through the eyes of artists and tastemakers. “It’s about the cool places to be in every city, where you show up and how you drop in. We’re keeping to the authenticity of coming from Canada, but it shows up differently in different cities,” says Kinney.
The long-term vision
Once the updated marketing and merchandising strategy has been executed, Kinney’s plan is to grow Moose Knuckles’s direct-to-consumer (DTC) retail footprint. “We’ve got some exciting flagships planned in the future. We just want to make sure the new players are in place and everybody has a chance to develop their muscles so we’re fully ready for the challenge,” she says. Moose Knuckles was built as a wholesale-native brand, stocked by retailers including Selfridges, Harrods and Saks, but has been able to diversify away, with DTC now accounting for 75% of sales evenly split between retail and digital. Moose Knuckles currently has 12 flagships, all in North America — its largest market.
Away from Canada and the US, the business is distributed between China, the rest of the Asia-Pacific region and Europe. In 2024, China’s largest down coat company, Bosideng, acquired a minority stake in Moose Knuckles, and has been providing operational and strategic expertise to shape the brand’s development in the region. Kinney says her growth plan for China is more “aggressive”, while in Europe it’s a “slower romance”. “In China, we resonate with a luxury consumer. We sit right next to Canada Goose and Moncler there,” she says. “In Europe, it’s a bit more sportswear and streetwear inspired. So as we grow our assortment, we’ll begin to flex our muscles in Europe.”
Based in Canada, Moose Knuckles has felt the impact of US import tariffs, but has been working since even before Kinney’s appointment to diversify production. “We continue to diversify where we’re making the product, where it makes sense. We do have some production in China that impacts the US, but we also still do some production in Canada, Vietnam, South America and Italy,” she says.
The pressing task for Moose Knuckles is to scale its cool factor into lasting global influence. “The challenges are the opportunities, which is exciting,” Kinney says. “There’s a lot of growth in front of us that can happen relatively quickly despite the challenging global economics.”
