Q&a With Salomon's First-ever Creative Director, Heikki Salonen, On Not Becoming A Fashion Brand

ANNA BURZLAFF: HEIKKI, YOU SAID WHAT'S NICE ABOUT SALOMON IS THAT THERE'S NOTHING BROKEN, THAT YOU'RE JUMPING IN ON A VERY EXCITING MOMENT WHEN EVERYTHING FEELS POSSIBLE. WHAT’S EXCITING RIGHT NOW AT SALOMON?

Heikki Salonen: Everything. Salomon is an almost 80-year-old company, and it's been through so many different phases. It’s been a supplier for ski edges, then has had a full cross-country skiing moment. When I was a kid, I thought Salomon was a backpack brand, because all the cool guys were wearing them. It's been hydration vests, it’s been on the forefront of trail running. It's been surfing, inline skating, and extreme sports. It’s been to so many places.

What's so nice about Salomon is that not many people remember all of this. And I think it shares something with Margiela in that sense. When I started at Margiela, it wasn't on everybody's lips. It's only been the past maybe six years that it's been super exposed, and every day there’s another Instagram reel on the history of Margiela, and yet it’s still not covered fully or understood properly. And I think Salomon has the same thing. It's like an onion, you peel one layer and it keeps on giving, constantly. Now people have seen maybe three models of shoes for the past five years and think that's Salomon. And it's so, so much more.

IS THERE A WAY TO NEATLY SUM UP WHAT SALOMON REPRESENTS?

I think that's the beauty, you cannot know. Part of my background is in women's fashion, and I love that I have to learn every single season. I need to put myself into a different perspective, and have that respect for whomever that person will be, who will wear the products I'm designing. It's always a great and humbling place to be.

I think it’s great to not know, and always be on the search for what it is, what the essence is. Also, as humans, we have different phases, our essence also changes. We can be 100% fashion people and 100% outdoor people at the same time. That's my big belief, and something that I have misunderstood at certain points.

SPORTS HAS ALWAYS BEEN A MASSIVE CULTURAL FORCE, BUT HAVE YOU SEEN ITS ROLE IN CULTURE CHANGE? DID THE OUTDOORS AND SPORTS BECOME MORE CULTURALLY RELEVANT?

Yeah, I think COVID shifted people's mindset. We started valuing the freedom to go and explore the nature in your vicinity. It resonates with people, still, we don't take nature for as granted as we did pre-COVID.

Also, as a Nordic person, we don't separate these things. The punks used to wear hiking shoes, outdoor culture is so embedded, because the elements are so present constantly.

20 YEARS AGO, I DON'T THINK SOMEONE WOULD HAVE SHOWN UP TO PARIS FASHION WEEK IN A SALOMON SNEAKER. BUT WHY IS IT NOW THAT THOSE TWO WORLDS ARE BLURRING SO MUCH?

I think it's just human behaviour, trying to find an element that doesn't belong to your space and contextualizing it within your circles. Just to have that weird, techy, nerdy thing.

What's beautiful about it is that you could be wearing the same thing as a sheep farmer. That gives true value to a product, when it's about your style and your connection with it. At airports, you see kids and their grandparents in Salomon shoes.

It's a different context, even if it is the same shoe. I love the fact that it's been loved in a different manner.​

ARE THERE OTHER WAYS THAT YOU'RE CONSCIOUS OF KEEPING SALOMON’S CREDIBILITY

We need to innovate. We need to work closely with our athletes. It needs to be a family in that sense. I don't think we need sports style or performance, we need to break these silos in sports. Everything can blur... Because that's the reality today. People get excited about performance products that also look good. Young athletes care how they look.

People need to get together in general, a village raises the kids.

And how we go out is a big part of it. It's not just about the product, but also how we present it. We should be as weird in our communication as we are with our products. And I don't think that's the case today.

It will not be easy, which is exciting. Change is never easy for people, it's much easier to just stay the same. I’m also there to preserve, but we need to change in order to preserve.

I don't mean preserving as in building a museum or just working on archives. We need to make new things and create new products, but the soul of Salomon needs to remain the same. That's the key.

WHAT'S YOUR STORY WITH OUTDOOR CLOTHING? HOW DID YOU GET INTO THIS?

I've always been intrigued by performance clothing, and when I'd travel with my fashion team they'd always complain that I wanted to go to all these performance clothing places. It’s crazy to me that there's an industry that can have the best product, the best design they've spent maybe two years developing, and it's still €250 for the end consumer. That would never happen in fashion. Having the best material everywhere on the shoe, and still at that price.

People just get bang for their buck. The best Gore-Tex jacket is €600. But, €600 in Prada? What do you get? The socks are €450. The t-shirt is €1,200. People vote with their feet.

WITH THE WAY THE SPORTS AND OUTDOOR SPACE HAS DEVELOPED, WHERE DOES THAT LEAVE SALOMON?

When I was at Margiela, I saw a shift at Salomon as it became a “fashionable” brand. That really triggered me, because Salomon should never become a fashion brand.

I want to slow this down now, and make sure that we create products for performance that can be adopted by the fashion community, but we shouldn't start making products whose core value is looking pretty or fashionable.

We should stay true to the outdoors. We should have all the performance elements for you to do a 100-mile run in a shoe, and then you can wear them during Fashion Week in Paris. That's what really resonated with me with Salomon, because I love the sport, I love that outdoor space. We need to protect the fact that we do the best performance clothing for our industry, and allow for it to be misused in different contexts as well.

AND, WHERE IS IT GOING? HOW DO YOU WANT TO EVOLVE SALOMON? I would love to keep it nerdy and weird. It's funny, internally at Salomon, people describe certain classic shoes as having a minimal look. And it couldn't be further from minimal. It has all these different technologies, it has a gradient, it's an absolutely mental shoe. I love the fact that people who have been working there for 20 years just see it as a normal, easy-going shoe. I want to keep that going – to continue to live in that weird bubble. I would love to just put that in a different context when we go to market. But we need to keep on creating these weird, very specific products, and then people can adopt them into totally different contexts.

The UGG boot is a great example. It’s been adopted as a cold climate shoe in Europe and the US, but was created for surfers in Australia to not sprain their ankles before going into cold water. Nobody knows that. People just see this weird product and go, okay, this is for me. I think we like that, that little ugliness in products. It resonates, maybe it's emotionally easier than putting on something very beautiful.