Salomon

Salomon began in Annecy, France in 1947 when François Salomon and his son Georges started fabricating ski edges in a workshop above the family's saw-blade business. The brand became synonymous with ski-binding innovation through the 1960s–80s, expanded into ski boots, trail running, hiking, and outdoor footwear, and quietly built a reputation for technically obsessive product engineering. The brand entered fashion's bloodstream through a different door. Around 2018 a small group of stylists in Paris, Tokyo, and Berlin — Lotta Volkova, Yoon Ahn, Tom Guinness — started styling the Salomon XT-6 and Speedcross trail shoes with runway looks; the gorpcore wave that followed turned a previously specialized outdoor company into one of the most-collaborated-with brands in streetwear. Comme des Garçons, MM6, Sandy Liang, Palace, Boris Bidjan Saberi, And Wander all queued up. Owned by the Amer Sports group (publicly listed in 2024), Salomon now operates a parallel reality: the same engineering that produces ski boots for World Cup racers also produces the standalone Sportstyle apparel line headed in Paris. Few outdoor brands have managed both worlds without diluting either. Salomon's secret is that the technical promise never actually softened — the shoes are still genuinely fast in the mountains.