From Runway To Mountain: Salomon's Bold New Creative Direction
The French Alps have long been Salomon's spiritual home, where performance and precision meet the raw beauty of mountain terrain. Now, as the outdoor specialist embarks on what CEO Guillaume Meyzenq calls a transformative new era, it's bringing a dose of Parisian fashion sensibility to its Annecy headquarters with the appointment of Heikki Salonen as its first creative director.
Salonen, the Finnish designer who spent over a decade shaping the aesthetic vision at MM6 Maison Margiela, represents an unconventional choice for a brand rooted in skiing, snowboarding, and technical footwear. Yet it's precisely this intersection of high fashion and high-performance gear that Salomon is banking on as it repositions itself from a traditional sports brand into what it describes as the world's premier mountain sports lifestyle brand.
"I used to be a hiker in the fashion world, now I'm a fashion guy in the hiking world," Salonen quipped in a recent interview, capturing the delicious irony of his career pivot.
A Strategic Evolution
The appointment comes at a moment of remarkable momentum for Salomon and its parent company, Amer Sports. The outdoor performance segment, which includes Salomon alongside Arc'teryx and Peak Performance, reported a striking 36 percent revenue increase in the third quarter, reaching 724 million dollars. Salomon's direct-to-consumer channel surged by 67 percent, while the brand opened 29 new stores in the quarter alone, predominantly across Greater China, Korea, and Japan.
This growth hasn't happened by accident. Under outgoing global chief brand officer Scott Mellin, who departs in April after three years at the helm, Salomon transformed from a purely functional brand into one that engages with contemporary culture at the intersection of sport, urban lifestyle, and design. Mellin's leadership reinforced what he describes as a culture of creativity that has long been rooted in Salomon's DNA.
Salonen's arrival represents the next chapter in this evolution. His remit spans both product design and brand creative direction across all soft goods categories, from apparel to the footwear that has become Salomon's breakout success story in recent years. The brand has achieved what Salonen calls a desirable balance between performance and subcultural relevance in its shoes, a foundation he plans to build upon rather than disrupt.
Fashion Credentials Meet Mountain Culture
The connection between Salonen and Salomon isn't entirely new. The two have collaborated since 2022 through an ongoing partnership with MM6 Maison Margiela that has spanned footwear, apparel, and accessories. This existing relationship provided both parties with a preview of what creative synergy might look like.
Salonen brings more than three decades of fashion experience to the role, including five years at Diesel where he headed the Diesel Black Gold line before his long tenure at MM6. His approach emphasizes collaboration and breaking down traditional silos between disciplines. He envisions missions where shoe designers and apparel designers work fluidly together, pitching ideas across categories because, as he puts it, everyone loves the sport and the products.
To support this vision, Salomon has brought on Laura Herbst as studio director. Herbst worked alongside Salonen for over a decade at MM6, Céline, and Maison Margiela, providing continuity and a shared creative language that should accelerate their ambitious plans.
One of Salonen's stated goals is to dissolve the artificial division between winter and summer sports. While hard goods remain outside his purview, he wants Salomon to present itself as one unified brand occupying what he calls a mountain outdoor athletic space, erasing the traditional boundaries that have separated ski season from hiking season in the outdoor industry.
This holistic approach aligns with broader shifts in how consumers engage with outdoor brands. The rise of gorpcore, the explosion of trail running, and the urbanization of technical apparel have all contributed to a landscape where performance gear seamlessly transitions from the mountain to the city street and back again.
Salomon's creative ambitions are physically manifested in its new Paris office and showroom, a 16,000-square-foot space spanning multiple floors in the city's 10th arrondissement. This creative and strategic hub, where Salonen recently sat for interviews, represents Salomon's commitment to deepening its fashion-world connections while maintaining its technical expertise base in Annecy.
The timing is particularly apt. Salomon will soon be in the global spotlight as a premium partner for the 2026 Winter Olympics and Paralympics in Milan and Cortina, events that will showcase both the brand's performance capabilities and its growing cultural cachet.
What Salonen inherits is a brand with nothing broken but everything possible. Salomon's recent trajectory has been remarkable, its products respected, and its market position strong. The challenge isn't to fix problems but to fulfill potential, to take a brand that has successfully navigated the transition from pure performance to lifestyle relevance and push it even further into new territory.
As Amer Sports continues to demonstrate robust growth, elevating its revenue forecasts to between 20 and 30 percent for recent quarters, the pressure is on to maintain momentum while expanding creative boundaries. Salonen must balance innovation with the technical integrity that has defined Salomon for decades, appealing to both the serious alpinist and the style-conscious urbanite who may never set foot above the tree line.
It's a delicate dance between authenticity and aspiration, between mountain culture and fashion culture. But if anyone can navigate this terrain, it might just be the hiker from the fashion world who's now ready to guide a fashion-forward brand deeper into the mountains.
As Meyzenq describes it, Salonen's appointment represents a unification of brand positioning, consumer experience, and product innovation. Whether this marriage of mountain and mode becomes the industry's next great success story remains to be seen. But one thing is certain: Salomon is betting that the future of outdoor sports looks a lot more like the intersection of performance and style, with no hierarchy between the two.
The mountains, after all, have always been democratic that way.
