The Moose was loose in Berlin this week, trailed by assorted blood spattered figures, ghoulish motel concierges, maggot-laced donuts, and a masked, knife-wielding killer. All courtesy of Canadian premium parka brand Moose Knuckles, which touched down in the German capital with an international crowd of journalists, influencers and bloggers to celebrate the parka specialist’s fall campaign.
Taking the form of a slasher-meets-Giallo-horror-movie trailer, “Shady Maple Motel” tells the story of Toronto rich kid Kim Horton and her parka-clad friends who get stranded in a creepy roadside motel on a snowy New Year’s Eve. It doesn’t end well, leaving the slasher the only one to start his new year living and breathing in a Moose Knuckles jacket.
Blame it on Moose Knuckles creative director Steph Hoff, an admitted aficionado of “cheesy drive-in movies.” The two-day, all nations get-together Wednesday and Thursday started with an opening “Night of Cheese” in a former crematorium in Wedding, and culminated with a dinner and big party at the darkly decadent Provocateur Hotel. Way after the clock struck 12, hot hip-hop star Sheck Wes provided the action in the hotel’s cellar club along with equestrian strippers, flappers, a turquoise-glitterized Incredible Hulk look-alike, and influential fly-ins like South Korean Instagram star Pony.
“We decided to throw a big party for the launch of Shady Maple Hotel,” which was produced by Toronto-based and four-time MTV Video Award nominees Kid.Studio, Hoff noted. And that party had to be in Europe, she said, “because we’re expanding there so fast, and it’s the halfway point for all our new friends around the world. Plus Berlin is a great city to have a party in. A buck goes a long way here.”
The brand’s increasingly global demographic has meant the use of more shearling in place of fur for fall, including all shearling jackets, founder and owner Noah Stern remarked. The non-vegan Canadians will “never get out of our iconic core pieces,” which means colorful fur-trimmed parkas and bombers. Also in the current cold-weather lineup: a dazzling gold series, sweatshirts with rabbit fur detailing, ultra-long football scarves, combat twill pieces and fly density transitional coats.