Since 2018, Moncler and Fragment have regularly returned to the same idea: clothing can tell the story of a journey rather than display a logo. For this new collaboration, Hiroshi Fujiwara revisits the Japanese sukajan that shaped him, taking it to the Italian mountains where Moncler was born.
In the post-war Japanese men’s wardrobe, one garment’s history says much about the subject on its own: the sukajan, or souvenir jacket, the embroidered jacket that American soldiers stationed in Yokosuka took home as a keepsake, covered with dragons, tigers or maps of Japan. Hiroshi Fujiwara, designer and guiding figure of Japanese streetwear, has long made it a personal signature. For this new collaboration with Moncler, the eighth since 2018, he chooses this very piece as his starting point and brings it into dialogue with the American varsity codes it has always carried within it.
The result is a reversible jacket adorned with meticulous embroidery tracing a route from Japan to Italy. The gesture is simple but rich in meaning: rather than illustrating a season or theme, the piece literally maps the relationship between the two houses, between the archipelago where Fujiwara built his vocabulary and the Alps where Moncler originated in 1952. Reserved for selected stores in Japan and Milan, it functions as an object of transmission more than simply a collection garment.
Around this central piece is a collection conceived as a transition from urban agitation to altitude. The campaign, starring Fujiwara himself, shows him in the varsity jacket against a bare white background, sometimes accompanied by a dog that echoes the “puppy” motif scattered through the collection. A gondola cabin with clean lines punctuates the images, like an antechamber between two worlds: the city, to be left behind, and the mountains, where Moncler has always found inspiration.
The wardrobe itself remains deliberately lightweight, without down filling: windbreakers, shirt jackets, jersey pieces, zip-up hoodies, T-shirts and trousers. A gradient check in deep green and black establishes itself as the season’s graphic signature, rendered on brushed cotton flannel. The graffiti-inspired Moncler FRGMT logo sits alongside embroidery referencing Casa Moncler, the house’s Milan headquarters. New for this edition, a FRGMTmini capsule miniaturises several key pieces, from the checked coach jacket to the hoodie, for younger wearers.
The collaboration also extends to footwear, with a three-way piece bringing Moncler, Clarks Originals and Fragment together around the iconic British Wallabee. Moncler and Clarks Originals had already offered a more technical version earlier in the year, made in suede with a GORE-TEX lining and Vibram Trailgrip sole designed to move seamlessly from street to trail. Fragment adds its own interpretation in all black, punctuated by signature details. A hybrid object in which British walking-shoe heritage meets Italian outdoor engineering and Japanese graphic precision.
What distinguishes this collaboration from the usual stylistic exercises between luxury houses and guest designers is its insistence on the journey rather than the destination. The sukajan has always been a garment of return, sewn to preserve the trace of a place one is leaving. By sending it travelling again, from Japan to Italy and then to stores around the world, Fujiwara and Moncler offer more than a new silhouette: on a garment, they reenact the very gesture that invented it.
The Moncler x Fragment by Hiroshi Fujiwara collection has been available since late August in selected Moncler stores and on moncler.com. The Trailgrip Wallabee GTX arrives at Moncler Ginza and the house’s website from 29 August, before a wider release in Japan from 1 September.
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