PARIS — Could Salomon be looking to up its fashion game as part of its growth strategy?
As a year marked by the biggest creative reset in decades draws to a close, market sources say the French outdoor brand may be about to bolster its creative leadership.
Finnish designer Heikki Salonen, MM6 Maison Margiela’s creative lead, has emerged as a top contender for the role. The two brands have an ongoing collaboration that began for the fall 2022 collection and has spanned shoes as well as clothing and accessories.
WWD broke the news when Salonen first joined the design team of MM6 back in 2013. He had previously worked at Erdem and Diesel.
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While known to many journalists who cover MM6 and review its runway shows in Milan and its pre-collections over Zoom, Salonen is a behind-the-scenes talent.
Maison Margiela officially attributes its MM6 collections to a design collective, and has held the torch for discretion as a tribute to Belgian founder Martin Margiela, often described as the Greta Garbo of fashion.
It is understood Salonen exited Maison Margiela earlier this week.
His start date at Salomon could not immediately be learned, and he did not immediately return requests for comment.
The designer also has a signature label, which recently made an appearance at London specialty store Hostem.
Meanwhile, Salomon is stepping up its ambitions, particularly with its sportstyle category. It opened a concept store around it on Paris’ Champs-Elysées in 2024.
The Annecy-based company has gone through “a period of great transition over the last five years” and now defines itself as “a modern mountain sport brand,” its chief executive officer Guillaume Meyzenq told WWD sister publication Footwear News in July.
On Thursday, the brand revealed it had opened an expansive office and showroom in Paris’ 10th arrondissement, a 16,000-square-foot space spanning multiple floors that will serve as a flagship creative and strategic center designed to accelerate the brand’s global impact, the company said. It is slated to open to clients during the upcoming Paris Men’s Fashion Week in January.
Salomon is a premium partner of the 2026 Winter Olympics, which are set to take place in Milan in February. Calling it “an exciting moment” for the brand, Meyzenq said it was “coming with a full storytelling package, from winter sports-driven material to sportstyle for a unified message. This is a big commitment for us to unfold, but it will be rewarding for the consumer to experience.”
