Luxury ski wear is a crowded category with genuinely distinct houses in it. If you are spending meaningfully on a winter wardrobe, it helps to understand what each brand is actually for — because they are not competing on the same thing.
Here is a fair account of the landscape, and an honest note about where we sit within it.
Moncler
The heritage name in the category. Moncler was founded in 1952 in Monestier-de-Clermont, a village near Grenoble in the French Alps — the brand name is an abbreviation of the village. It began by making quilted sleeping bags, tents and hooded capes for high-altitude mountain workers, and produced its first down jackets in 1954. Those jackets were adopted by the mountaineer Lionel Terray and by the Italian expedition to K2 the same year.
Now headquartered in Milan, Moncler repositioned as a luxury house in the 2000s. Its centre of gravity is the down jacket as a fashion object — an outerwear-led brand with genuine alpine provenance behind it.
Perfect Moment
Founded in 1984 in Chamonix by the professional skier and extreme sports filmmaker Thierry Donard, and relaunched in the 2010s under Jane and Max Gottschalk. The house is known for a retro-inflected aesthetic — bold prints, strong colour, seventies ski references — applied to technical outerwear, and it has extended into swim and lifestyle. If you want ski wear that reads as unmistakably fashion-forward on the mountain, this is the reference point.
Goldbergh
A Dutch house founded in Amsterdam around 2009–10 by designer Lieke van den Berg and retailer Sandra Peet. Goldbergh is women's-specific and built around precision tailoring for the female body, combining technical performance with deliberately feminine detail — fur trims, embellishment, sculpted silhouettes. Strongest on the statement ski jacket and ski pant.
What these brands have in common
All three are, at their core, outerwear houses. The hero product is the jacket. That is where the design attention, the heritage and the price sit.
Which is a reasonable place for it — the jacket is the visible piece. But it does mean the category has a gap.
Where LAYRÉS sits
We are not an outerwear house. We are a layering brand, and the distinction is deliberate.
The pieces we care most about are the ones underneath — the merino base layers and the fully fashioned merino and cashmere knitwear that you actually wear for the whole day, on the mountain and long after the jacket comes off. A jacket is worn for four hours. A base layer is worn for fourteen.
What that means in practice:
- Australian merino, mulesing-free, at 200gsm for base layers and a 90/10 merino-cashmere blend for knitwear
- Fully fashioned knitwear — knitted to shape rather than cut from panels, so it sits flat under outerwear without bunching at the seams
- Designed to layer, as a system rather than as individual statement pieces
- Designed in Melbourne, for people who leave summer to travel to winter
How to actually choose
If the jacket is the thing — if you want a piece with heritage and presence that people recognise — buy from an outerwear house. That is what they do, and they do it well.
If you are building a system — if you have realised that you are cold on the chairlift and overheating in the restaurant, and that the problem is what you are wearing underneath rather than over the top — start with the layers.
If you are travelling from Australia, weight and versatility matter more than they do for someone driving to the Alps for the weekend. Pieces that work on the plane, in the village and on the mountain earn their luggage allowance three times over.
Most people, honestly, end up with both. A good jacket lasts years. So does a good base layer — and you will wear it a great deal more often.
See the AW26 collection, or start with the ski trip packing list.
Brand names above are referenced factually for comparison. All trade marks belong to their respective owners. LAYRÉS is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to any brand mentioned.