Brushed suede, Cordura® mesh and a Vibram® waffle-pattern sole: the new CityTrek borrows its vocabulary from 1970s hiking shoes to dress an entirely urban use. A way for Moncler to bring its Alpine heritage down to the pavement.
It all begins in Monestier-de-Clermont, a village in the French Alps where the Maison was founded in 1952. Since then, Moncler has built its catalogue around three lines: Moncler Collection for elegance, Moncler Grenoble for mountain performance, Moncler Genius for co-creation. The CityTrek explicitly claims none of these three affiliations — it presents itself as a cross-cutting object, designed for urban exploration rather than the trail.
The construction, for its part, remains faithful to the house’s technical register. The upper combines brushed suede with nylon side inserts, suede finishes and Cordura® mesh front panels, a material chosen for its breathability rather than its aesthetics. At the back, a smooth leather heel counter hugs the ankle and stabilises the stance — a detail usually reserved for walking boots rather than city sneakers.
Underfoot, a cushioning midsole rests on a natural-rubber Vibram® outsole, whose waffle pattern echoes that of vintage trail soles. This design, originally conceived for grip on loose ground, becomes here a visual signature more than a functional necessity: the CityTrek moves across asphalt, not scree. The palette chosen — mineral, powdery shades — departs from the bright codes usual in outdoor clothing and brings the object closer to everyday, almost discreet use.
Three details complete the silhouette: Monduck, the Maison’s mascot, appears inside the elasticated tongue, where it indicates the size; a tricolour flag adorns the heel, a direct reminder of Moncler’s French origin; an embroidered “M” signs the sides of the shoe. All signals designed for close reading, that of a sneaker market where detail serves as an identity card.
The CityTrek has been available since 3 August 2026 in a selection of Moncler boutiques and on Moncler.com.
What this object says goes beyond the shoe alone: houses born on the summits are now recycling their technical archives — waffle soles, hybrid uppers — to conquer a much flatter terrain, that of the streets where the majority of their sales are now made.
The waffle pattern of the Vibram® sole is not a mere retro wink: it takes up the design of trail soles conceived for grip on uneven ground, here redeployed with no real technical function on pavement — an aesthetic transfer that reveals how the outdoors now irrigates the urban wardrobe.
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