Moncler’s best stories start high up in the mountains. On 31 July 1954, Italian alpinists Achille Compagnoni and Lino Lacedelli became the first people to reach the summit of K2, the world’s second-highest peak, as part of an Italian expedition led by geologist Ardito Desio. Moncler, then a young outerwear label founded in the French Alps just two years earlier, had outfitted the team with its Karakorum jacket. Named after the range that K2 belongs to, it was made from down-insulated raw cotton, built to withstand the sub-zero temperatures, with a protective hood, snap buttons along the front and internal shoulder straps that allowed the hikers carry it like a backpack when they weren’t wearing it.

The same expedition spirit ran through the Himalayas. The outerwear label dressed French mountaineer Lionel Terray for his first ascent of Makalu in 1955, and that legacy shaped the short down jacket that debuted in 2009 – and later became one of Moncler’s most recognised signatures, the Maya.

In 1980s Milan, the paninari, a youth movement that gathered around the city’s grab-and-go sandwich shops, adopted the puffer as a uniform, and the Verone became a cultural emblem. The same decade brought us the Tibb, an oversized gilet with boudin quilting, heritage zip pullers and a metal chest logo.

Now all four return as part of Re/Icons, a capsule of archival designs reworked for today. The new Karakorum comes in black, red or petrol blue. It’s made from glossy 10-denier micro ripstop, lighter and more cocooning than the original, but it keeps the double snap-button front and the internal shoulder straps that allow you to carry it like a rucksack. The Maya is reimagined in a soft cotton-nylon blend, still with its drawstring hood and logo patch on the sleeve pocket, in off-white, brown, navy and black.

Most at home in the city, the Verone is relaxed and cut from matte micro cotton, with a pull-out hood and a storm placket, in navy, grey and black. The Tibb is now reversible, in recycled matte Longue Saison or wool gabardine, in black, grey, white or caramel.

Take a closer look, and you’ll notice that the alpine heritage is maintained through the details. Inside, a label carries Vittorio Sella’s 1909 photograph of K2, while the pocket pins nod to vintage alpine souvenirs. For the first time in the history of the Re/Icons capsule, the line also extends beyond outerwear to windbreakers, T-shirts, trousers, beanies and titanium sunglasses modelled on climbing goggles.