When Cold-Weather Coats Get Too Hot

After transforming ski parkas into high-fashion items, Moncler is looking for its next act.

- Robert Williams

Remo Ruffini has shown he can sell down jackets in July. He’s found buyers for fur-trimmed ski parkas from not one, but two stores in Hawaii. And he’s managed to turn outerwear designed for subzero temperatures into a fashion statement on runways in New York, Paris, and Milan. Now he has to prove that he can keep selling enough of his $1,000 jackets—in climes both hot and cold—to warrant his company’s market valuation of $10.7 billion. “People aren’t dressing the way they did 10 years ago,” Ruffini, 56, says at the Milan headquarters of Moncler SpA, where the showroom racks are stuffed with everything from tiny puffers for children to $1,700 fox-fur hats. “The down jacket is a part of this new look.”