By Maya Singer
Hmm. Where to start? This evening’s Moncler Grenoble event was easily one of the oddest fashion presentations this reviewer has had the fine fortune to witness. It would have been somewhat odd had it merely featured the Pendulum Choir, an all-male a cappella group from Switzerland, singing strange arrangements of traditional Alpine song. It would have been fairly odd if the choir had performed in front of a backdrop of singers, each one in a lit box, clad in new looks from Moncler. But what really made this coup de théâtre one for the ages was the fact that the members of the Pendulum Choir were clad in down-filled Moncler morning suits—ski-ready, one presumes—and mounted on mechanized pedestals that moved them about as they sang. That was the cherry on top, the thing that made you wonder, Is there an opera based on a short story by Kafka I don’t know about? (Probably.) You also wondered, more fleetingly, what all those ski suits worn by the choristers actually looked like. Who knows? Their clothes were all black and white; the lookbook pictures that run with this review show women’s polarwear in a variety of colors, featuring stretch quilting and tie-dye fur, and men’s looks heavy on nylon printed to resemble tweed. All very natty, as these things go, and no doubt we’ll be seeing plenty of these Moncler looks riding up the lifts at Chamonix and Gstaad. The Pendulum Choir seemed to be singing in German; maybe that’s what they were singing about.
