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Hiroshi Fujiwara’s Fragment joins Moncler and Clarks Originals to rebuild a 200 year old boot for the mountains, the centerpiece of Moncler’s FW26 footwear push.
Moncler’s longest running Genius union is not spending this season on outerwear. For fall/winter 2026, Hiroshi Fujiwara‘s Fragment has turned its attention to a shoe that has nothing to do with down filling: the Clarks Wallabee, a chukka boot that has been in continuous production since 1967. The result is a three way connection between Moncler, Fragment, and Clarks Originals, built around Moncler’s Trailgrip outsole platform and reworked with GORE-TEX lining for wet weather use. It arrives alongside a wider Moncler footwear expansion for the season, and it is the clearest sign yet that the brand intends to treat shoes as serious as it treats its jackets.
Introducing Moncler x Fragment by Hiroshi Fujiwara. Where minimalism meets the mountains.
Discover more on https://t.co/G256tSM8SO#Moncler #MonclerGenius pic.twitter.com/59Gxoo3WMa
— Moncler (@Moncler) August 24, 2026
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The Wallabee has survived nearly six decades of reinvention, much of it at the hands of other labels. Streetwear names from Aimé Leon Dore to Supreme to Wu-Tang Clan have all put their own spin on the moccasin toe sil, and BAPE has taken a run at it too. Moncler had stayed out of that lineage until 2022, when its 2 Moncler 1952 line released a five piece Wallabee collide that split the difference between wool alpine style and Moncler’s own puffer lang, complete with toggle fastening and “1952” embossed fobs. That early project stay close to Clarks’ original crepe sole construction. The new Trailgrip Wallabee GTX goes further, swap in Moncler’s own Trailgrip Vibram outsole and a waterproof GORE-TEX lining, converting a shoe built for pavement into something meant to survive a trail.
Fragment’s involvement changes the calculus again. Where the 1952 line lean into Moncler’s own codes, Fujiwara’s design studio has spent years mixing military, vintage, and techwear reference into everything it touches, and the Wallabee’s moccasin construction gives that mixing something concrete to work against. A companion sil, the Altive Mid Boot, is also part of the drop, extend the collide beyond a single shoe into a small capsule. Full colorway and material breakdowns for both styles were not yet published at the time of writing, and this piece does not guess at them.
The Wallabee itself is older than most of the labels now reinterpreting it. Clarks, a British footwear maker founded in 1825 in Street, Somerset, introduced the silhouette in 1967, drawing on a moccasin construction the company had picked up from South African workwear. Its low profile, crepe sole, and two eyelet lacing became one of the most quietly influential shapes in menswear, worn everywhere from British mod subculture to Wu-Tang Clan videos long before it became a fixture of collide culture. Grafting a Vibram Trailgrip sole and a GORE-TEX membrane onto that shape is a bigger structural change than most of the Wallabee’s past convincer have attempted, since it touches the sole unit and the waterproofing rather than just the upper.
milan
The connection was previewed in June at Studio Ascenti, a footwear focused showcase Moncler staged in Milan to walk press and its wider community through what was coming across 2026 and into 2027. The Trailgrip Wallabee GTX and Altive Mid Boot were shown there alongside the rest of Moncler’s expanding footwear roster, including a Rick Owens take on the Trailgrip Megalace and a Moon Boot collaboration built off the Moncler Grenoble runway. At the time, Moncler described the Fragment project as still largely under wraps, with the ready to wear side of the collaboration confirmed to land alongside it later in the summer. That framing lines up with the brand’s own pattern for FRGMT: the label’s past several seasons with Moncler, including the Love is Human campaign fronted by Hwang Minhyun and the “Where nothing means everything” installation built around British sculptor Richard Wilson’s Looking Glass piece, have consistently paired a clothing release with a standalone campaign moment rather than launching shh.
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Fujiwara’s relationship with Moncler is one of the oldest working relationships inside the Genius project, dating back to the 7 Moncler Fragment collection that debuted years before Genius reorganized itself around individual co-creator lines. Footwear has actually been part of that relationship for longer than most people give it credit for. A 2020 capsule paired Fragment and Moncler with Clarks for the first time, reworking the Wallabee and an Altive boot for that season’s fall/winter drop, and Fragment and Moncler have returned to Clarks periodically since. The new Trailgrip Wallabee GTX is best understood as the technical, GORE-TEX equipped descendant of that earlier pairing rather than a first time crossover, which explains why the three names slot together so easily here.
The ready to wear side of the FRGMT relationship has moved through a few distinct chapters recently, and each has leaned on a different piece of Moncler’s own archive. One recent collection built its entire concept around a 1974 postcard sent to Moncler by a Montblanc expedition team thanking the brand for its high performance gear, reproducing the postcard’s imagery and the mountaineers’ original trail outline across the garments, with a serial numbered varsity jacket, dubbed the Celsia, at the center of the release. The following season’s Love is Human campaign, shot by Tokyo based photographer Xavier Tera and fronted by Moncler ambassador Hwang Minhyun, framed the clothes through the eyes of a LOVOT, a companion robot Fujiwara had introduced to Moncler at a prior Art of Genius event in London. A more recent seasonal release, campaigned as “Where nothing means everything” and staged inside British sculptor Richard Wilson’s Looking Glass installation in Shanghai, leaned into slick matte and glossy black nylon, grid quilting, and embroidered quotes from Nietzsche and Aristotle. Set against that run, a footwear led collide with Clarks reads as Fujiwara working in a more utilitarian register than his recent ready to wear seasons, closer in spirit to the archive minded 7 Moncler Fragment years than to the campaign heavy releases that followed them.
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Here is where the record gets messier than a single confirmed date. A Japan market release notice put the Trailgrip Wallabee GTX up for pre order through Moncler’s own Japanese online store starting August 26, the same day this piece was written. Moncler’s own social channels, meanwhile, have listed the wider Moncler plus Clarks Originals plus Fragment Wallabee GTX as launching August 29 in one post and early September in another, without fully reconciling the two dates. Earlier reporting out of Milan in June had pointed to an August launch window for the ready to wear side of the project specifically, which is broadly consistent with a late August or early September footwear release but does not resolve which exact date is correct. Rather than pick one figure to state as fact, it is worth laying out plainly: Japan appears to be moving first, on or around August 26, with the wider release settling somewhere in the following two weeks. Pricing for the Trailgrip Wallabee GTX has not been published. Moncler’s mainline Trailgrip GTX sneaker, for comparison, sits at the upper end of four figures, and industry reporting on the non-Fragment Clarks collaboration has suggested a retail price likely to land north of $500, though that estimate was made before either shoe’s actual price was confirmed.
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The Trailgrip Wallabee GTX is not a standalone move. It is one piece of a footwear expansion Moncler has been building out across most of 2026, all of it tied back to the Trailgrip platform first introduced in 2022. Alongside the Fragment and Clarks Originals project, the same season brings a Rick Owens designed Trailgrip Megalace built for a November launch, a Moon Boot connection on the Moncler Grenoble Icon High Rodeo that pulls in western boot detailing and is set for December, and an in-house Peak Arès model slated for October. Furthest out is the Trailgrip Ultra, described as the lightest shoe in the Trailgrip family to date, built with a supercritical foam midsole and a carbon fiber wing plate for stability, which Moncler has pointed to for a 2027 arrival. Seen against that lineup, the Wallabee merge reads less like a one-off streetwear moment and more like Moncler using its oldest Genius relationship to anchor a much larger bet on footwear as a category, one the brand has been treating with the same design attention it has historically reserved for outerwear.
Moncler x Fragment high-top “DER / FRGMT”
From the DRIFT archive: Review: Cordova Cortina Vichy Shell Puffer Jacket · Essential Layers: Levi’s Fall/Winter 2025 Outerwear Guide
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