The eYe Junya Watanabe Man Collaboration Reworks Mammut’s Technical Archive Across Seven Pieces, With Donald Schneider Studio Bringing the Partnership and Its Surreal CGI Campaign to Life
Junya Watanabe is heading into the mountains with Mammut for a new collaboration that brings the Japanese designer’s approach to reconstruction together with the Swiss company’s alpine heritage.
Launching globally on September 24, 2026, eYe Junya Watanabe Man + Mammut comprises six jackets and one backpack, drawing on Mammut’s archive of technical mountaineering equipment and reinterpreting its codes for contemporary menswear.
The collaboration also has an important creative link in Donald Schneider. Through Donald Schneider Studio, Schneider helped bring Watanabe and Mammut together and developed the campaign surrounding the project, teaming with CGI artist Blocki, the creative mind behind Blockschmidt, to create its surreal visual world.
For Watanabe, the starting point was Mammut’s archive. Rather than simply applying the outdoor brand’s visual signatures to fashion pieces, the designer explored decades of alpine product development and technical innovation, using that history as material for reinterpretation.
“This season, I wanted to create some pieces that combine the craftmanship and elegance of eYe JUNYA WATANABE MAN with the genuine alpine expertise and technical innovation of Mammut,” said Watanabe.
The resulting collection occupies increasingly fertile territory between technical outdoor equipment and fashion. Mammut’s performance-driven silhouettes and functional details remain visible, but are reconsidered through Watanabe’s approach to materials, construction, patchworking and hybridization.
Among the six jackets is a Ventile piece with a detachable hood, an insulated design incorporating Watanabe’s signature patchwork detailing and an eiderdown jacket that brings an unusually luxurious natural insulation into the collection.
A minimalist backpack completes the capsule, featuring a rope-inspired handle and a Mammut mascot attached with a climbing carabiner.
“For this collaboration, we invited Junya Watanabe to engage directly with Mammut’s product heritage and reinterpret it through his own creative lens,” said Paul Cosgrove, Chief Product Officer of Mammut. “The collection combines authentic mountain design elements, premium materials and functional details with a highly distinctive approach to construction, resulting in pieces that feel both rooted in Mammut’s alpine DNA and entirely new in their expression.”
While the collection draws from genuine mountain equipment, it is intended for contemporary lifestyles rather than purely technical alpine use. That distinction becomes central to the collaboration: equipment born from the requirements of the mountains is shifted into the everyday wardrobe without entirely losing its original identity.
Donald Schneider Studio extends that collision of environments into the campaign. Created with Blocki of Blockschmidt, the CGI-driven imagery places elements of everyday urban infrastructure in expansive alpine landscapes. Escalators rise above the tree line, elevators open onto mountain peaks and familiar architectural environments become improbable entrances into Mammut’s world.
The surrealism provides a visual shorthand for the collaboration itself, bringing city and mountain together without attempting to make either disappear into the other.
“The collaboration reflects Mammut’s ongoing commitment to exploring how mountain culture can inspire creativity far beyond the alpine environment,” said Heiko Schäfer, Chief Executive Officer of Mammut.
For Mammut, the partnership provides an opportunity to explore more fashion-oriented expressions of an identity built through more than a century of mountain culture. For Watanabe, it provides another highly specialized archive and technical vocabulary to dismantle, study and reconstruct.
And behind the meeting is Schneider, whose role in connecting the collaborators and translating the project into its campaign makes the partnership more than a straightforward fashion-meets-outdoor capsule. It becomes a three-way creative conversation spanning design, alpine engineering and image-making.
The eYe Junya Watanabe Man + Mammut collection launches globally September 24 through selected Mammut channels and premium retail partners.
