Moncler Launches Outerwear Collection With Jony Ive & LoveFrom Collective

MILAN — For the first time, Sir Jony Ive is venturing into fashion design, partnering with Moncler.

The collection of outerwear pieces with Moncler designed by Ive as part of the LoveFrom collective he founded with Marc Newson in 2019, launched Tuesday in Paris and on Moncler’s e-store, and will be rolled out in key cities globally.

“Creativity is at the core of everything we do. It’s what fuels me to transform our ideas and dreams into reality. I’ve known Jony for quite some time, and after a while it came natural to collaborate on something together,” said Remo Ruffini, chairman and chief executive officer of Moncler.

“Working with Jony takes you out of the ordinary. To partner with a design mastermind, and a friend, on his first clothing collection has been not only a privilege but an incredibly valuable learning experience. Discovering new worlds and approaches to design has been truly inspiring,” he added.

Moncler has developed a new high-quality recycled nylon exclusively for the collaboration with LoveFrom. The yarn-dyed fibers have been taslanized, a treatment in which compressed air texturizes the thread, giving it a matte appearance and the look of a natural fiber.

The collection is a system of three shells — evolutions of the field jacket, parka and poncho — that connect to a central core through the magnetic “Duo button” featuring the Monduck and the LoveFrom bear logos. The button is engineered from aluminum, brass, steel and a heat-resistant magnet.

The core is available in yellow, the field jacket in green, the parka in light blue and the poncho in orange. All garments are also available in off-white.

Prices range from $2,000 to around $3,000.

Here, Ive talks with WWD about the collaboration and why he thinks he is “the most grateful and fortunate” designer ever.   

WWD: You joined Apple in 1992 and, as chief design officer, you have been responsible for all hardware, user interface and packaging design, as well as architectural projects such as the Apple Park  and the Apple retail stores. What were the main challenges venturing into fashion versus technology design?

John Ive: I personally think that if you’re a designer, you’re a designer. And you know, the challenge between designing something small that you put in your ear, like earbuds, it’s as different as designing a phone or a building. And so I think very often the barriers are those we tend to establish between different disciplines. I don’t believe them, as I think you can cross into different disciplines, but it’s very important that you do so with humility and deference and that you’re aware that you’re moving into a new space. But I treat every single design project that way. You know, at 30 years at Apple, every time I started something new, I started it with that beginner’s mind and I think being very curious is so important, and that the curiosity means that learning is more important than being right. And so if that’s the case, it feels very natural to want to be working in different areas, whether it’s architecture, automobile, design, traditional product design, it feels very natural to want to understand the problems that are unique to each area.

WWD: Why did you agree to work with Moncler, although we know you have a special relationship with Remo Ruffini?

J.I.: I think the older I get, it’s who I work with that becomes more important in some ways than what I work on and so I felt a connection with Remo first. I thought his sons were lovely and, so to me, that was very important. And I just admire what Remo has managed to do with his team at Moncler. And I think Moncler clearly is a great brand. And I think we had an overlap and shared the same belief and the same commitment to innovation. I honestly think lots of people would say innovation and trying to solve hard problems is virtuous. Of course, it’s a good thing. But many people don’t have the fortitude and don’t have the commitment to do that, and my intuition turned out to be correct in that Remo’s commitment to supporting solving difficult problems was extraordinary.

WWD: Did you have any guidelines for this project or were you entirely free to develop your ideas?

J.I.: That was one of the things that was lovely, there were very few constraints. But we really started with a yarn that Moncler had developed from recycled nylon, and they’ve been working on this yarn and fabric, and really, I found it beguiling. It had a wonderful texture and hand. That’s where we began. The commitment to responsibly and carefully use materials was a shared starting point and then we explored if it were possible to try and make these garments with no seams and with no joints and so they’re essentially fabricated in a very new way, which required Moncler finding a loom that was capable of creating extremely wide and lots of fabric from this yarn. Essentially, we cut one single piece and then the way that it’s folded gives the garment structure and form. This appeals, I guess, to a core design philosophy I have, which is, you know, trying to do more with less. And so from one single piece of fabric, not requiring all the traditional cuts and sew, to create one complete garment.

WWD: Was Moncler in charge of production? Can you tell us about joining forces with the company?

J.I.: Yes this was one of the life-affirming, joyful aspects to the collaboration, that the LoveFrom team and the Moncler team got to work very closely together. And at both teams, we learned a great deal. At the end of a project, there’s what you create, and then there’s what you learn. And they’re both very important.

WWD: Is there one lesson in particular that you want to share?

J.I.: Well, there were so many technical things, technical aspects that we learned, but there are so many processes that Moncler has mastered. It’s a very challenging thing to make the garment from one single piece, but to work with the team in terms of how you cut that piece and how it how it drapes and how it forms, was a real privilege for the LoveFrom team, and for me, the other aspect to the project was that it was really a system. So there’s a core, which is insulated, and then there are three outer shells. The outer shells have no insulation, just a single fabric thick. And the way that those connect to the inner core really led us to develop a very new type of button. It’s something that should be played with because the experience of how this button works, I think, is quite beguiling, and we spent a lot of time on it. I love problems, where you take an archetype, like a button that’s been around for thousands of years, and you see if it’s possible to do something better. It’s always possible to do something different, and that’s easy. It’s much more difficult to do something that’s better. I think our new button, the way that it comes together…we were all really excited about it. It’s made from a number of different metals, and it’s magnetic, and in a curious way, I think it came to sort of symbolize our collaboration, the process and adventure that we’ve shared over the last few years. We were honored to put on the inside our LoveFrom logo mark and on the outside the Moncler logo.

WWD: Are you thinking of other fashion projects? Did this project leave you wanting for more?

J.I.: At Apple, I loved working in hard materials, soft materials, and so I’ve been doing that for decades and decades. This is an area where I think, going back to what I said about the who, we’ve so enjoyed our collaboration and we’re planning on doing many more things together. There is that excitement of new challenges, but now from the foundation of actually knowing each other very well and having faced the challenges of innovation together. So, yes, we have a number of ideas for what we’d like to do together.

WWD: Is there one specific object that you would have liked to design and you didn’t?

J.I.: That’s a lovely question, I have been the luckiest guy in the world, really. I managed to design buildings. I’m working, as you may know, with John Elkann at Ferrari, I got to work with Remo and Moncler, to have worked for so many decades with Steve Jobs at Apple. So I honestly feel unspeakably grateful and fortunate.