Remo Ruffini is at home on the black diamond slopes of St. Moritz, Switzerland, where he started skiing at age 3. He's at home along the sun-parched coastline of Corsica, the medina of Marrakesh and the coffee shops of Tokyo's Shibuya district.

Where he generally has not felt at home, at least until recently, is in Milan, the maw of Italy's fashion industry. Starting in 2013, Ruffini grudgingly kept a pied-à-terre here, near the corporate headquarters of Moncler, the French outerwear brand he bought in 2003 and transformed from a struggling ski-jacket wholesaler into a luxury success story-one that made Ruffini, 65, now the company's executive chairman, a billionaire. Moncler's market cap is pushing $16 billion and has climbed fairly steadily since its 2013 listing on the Milan Stock Exchange.

If he hasn't quite made peace with Milan, Ruffini has finally settled into his version of home here. Late last year he left Como, roughly 30 miles north, where he and his wife had raised their two sons and where he grew up, and moved into a new residence on Via Bigli, a narrow street that loosely parallels Via Montenapoleone, on the edge of Milan's Quadrilatero della Moda. In 2020, Ruffini bought a century-old apartment building here that was nondescript by Milanese standards but substantial enough to accommodate the six-story vertical compound he had in mind.

"It's not a house, honestly. It's a place in Milano," Ruffini says elliptically of his new home base. "I think there is a place where life, work and creativity naturally come together."

Patrick Gilles, who with his partner, Dorothée Boissier, worked with Ruffini on the conversion, is used to translating such off-piste musings into habitable interiors. "We played so much here in terms of materials, technology, innovation," says Gilles. "Because Remo is like that. He's always pushing you."

With its elaborate wall finishes, redwood-size columns and dark floors puzzled together from inlaid marble and parquet, the sprawling residence reflects Ruffini's sparring maximalist tastes: one part the rationalist, made-to-measure opulence of Milan in the '30s, one part the theatricality and excess of the '80s, when Ruffini was coming up in the business. After seeing Gilles & Boissier's work on the Manhattan restaurant Buddakan 20 years ago, Ruffini immediately took to their materials-forward aesthetic and hired the couple to design his first yacht, then a second, his Como home, and eventually family houses in Morocco and Switzerland and a few hundred retail stores.

Some of Buddakan's dark majesty informs the Via Bigli townhouse, which is not for the family but for Ruffini himself. He and his wife, Francesca Ruffini Stoppani, separated in 2021, and their two sons, now in their 30s, live nearby. From the marble-lined car park, you head upstairs to a family office and above that to a guest floor, followed by one with a living room and kitchen. But no dining room. Ruffini, Boissier says, "hates dining rooms. The formality of them. So in all his houses we are doing, like, small restaurants."

The two upper levels are reserved for Ruffini's private apartment and a rooftop entertaining space. Boissier calls them "a Milanese loft," and they're connected by a corkscrewing staircase in ruby-red lacquer, like a flaming luge track. Between acres of sofas are plants, sculpture and many beguiling chairs Ruffini has collected from here and there-Andalusia, Morocco, Japan, the Swiss mountains.

"It's all mixed together," he says jovially, taking a drag on a cigar-size vape pen. "This is something I like very much."

L'Oie, a goose sculpted in patinated bronze by François-Xavier Lalanne, commands a prominent tabletop in the living room. "It was in an auction, and I said, OK, this is a piece for me," Ruffini says. "I didn't have many Lalanne pieces-but this was the goose, my DNA of my company."

A key strand of Moncler's DNA has always been the transporting vibe of its retail spaces, including in New York City, where the brand opened its first store in 2010. Ruffini didn't need another Manhattan outpost; he already had two, one uptown, one down. But when he learned that FAO Schwarz had vacated its 61,000-square-foot flagship on Fifth Avenue, he made his move.

And now, he's opening the doors to his own fantastical toy store-one of the largest single-brand luxury spaces in North America-studded with nylon puffer jackets, alpine performance gear, edgy designer collaborations and increasingly seasonless sportswear. Arguably the most experiential of the company's 299 global retail outlets, the space simulates a mountain cavern, with chiaroscuro lighting and digital projections unfolding beneath 30-foot ceilings and a glass facade evoking the glittering lights of Times Square.

"I always felt New York was my city, for my energy," Ruffini says. "And the U.S. has always been very important for me, mostly for strategy." He's referring to the fashion happenings Moncler has staged in Grand Central Station and elsewhere. This time, he says, his intention is more fundamental: to build "a long-term relationship with our community. Not only to sell, but to have people inside to experience Moncler."

The palatial new digs are the kind of go-for-broke bet that has distinguished Ruffini's transformation of the brand, says Boissier. She draws a comparison between Ruffini and another wealthy client, Alan Faena, the Argentine fashion designer-turned-hotelier and showboating real-estate developer. The two men are emotional and sartorial opposites-Ruffini is unruffled, circumspect, a blue-blazer-and-gray-flannels kind of guy, while the effusive Faena wears nothing but white.

Both "are so strong in their way of living," Boissier says. "They completely infuse their brand DNAs with their own way of being."

"You can really feel Remo behind the place," she adds of the flagship's high-drama look, the culmination of more than two decades translating Ruffini's retail fever dreams into coherent spatial narratives. "Brands are usually quite-voilà," she says, dusting off her hands. "Trying to have a very common voice to have a lot of clients. This is not the case with Moncler."

A few years ago, Ruffini decided that the Moncler workforce-which had mushroomed to 7,000 employees, more than 700 of them scattered in offices around Milan-needed a consolidating compound of its own.

Casa Moncler, which opened last fall, is a glass-walled, sunlit mini-city buffered by gardens and walkways in a former industrial district south of the urban center.

"I really wanted our facilities in Milano to remove barriers," he says, adding that for the first time, financial and creative divisions work side by side, with all employees enjoying Silicon Valley-style perks like concierge laundry and tailoring services. "Now it's very interesting," Ruffini says. "Curiosity is there, dialogue is there. It's not only in the meeting, but at lunch or when you go to get coffee. I think everybody feels we are a community."

The new dynamic appears to be paying off. In the first half of 2026, Moncler sales hit an all-time high of $1.24 billion, a 9% increase over the same period in 2025 at constant exchange rates.

"Yes, not bad," Ruffini says of the numbers. "We are quite happy. I think we can do much more."