Kinney adds that there are broadly two buckets: “Streetwear-informed performancewear” and “luxury-informed streetwear”. “We’ll start from the outside in: what are those outerwear pieces our customer wants from us, and what are they wearing underneath them? It’s like working in reverse from a traditional fashion brand.” The expanded assortment with the new design vision will be available from spring 2026.
“While we’re rooted in technical outerwear and have that product integrity, the reason the brand broke through so disruptively was because it had this urban, fashion sensibility and a connection to culture that allows us to expand into other categories,” says Kinney, who moved from Venice Beach to Montréal for the role, bringing expertise in merchandising from her experience leading contemporary brands A.L.C and Kendall + Kylie as CEO and Derek Lam as chief merchant. “All the ingredients are there, it’s about putting the right players into place and some process into place to professionalize the organization to scale.”
With the category blurring between performancewear, streetwear and luxury, and consumers buying fewer but better pieces, the next wave of winners will be those that can merge functional innovation, design authority, wearability and cultural relevance. Moose Knuckles is following a tried-and-tested luxury outerwear playbook: its biggest competitors, Moncler and Canada Goose, have already expanded beyond cold-weather gear into full lifestyle collections as a way to stand out in an increasingly competitive market. The global luxury outerwear market stood at $19.1 billion in 2025 and is set to reach $36.6 billion by 2035, driven by a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 6.72%, according to a report from Business Research Insights.
The challenge is that the luxury outerwear market is dominated by large, publicly traded companies, with strong brand recognition driving pricing power. Luxury performance outerwear can also be capital intensive with complex, pricey production and logistics, meaning that smaller brands face margin pressure that incumbents don’t.
