The Courchevel and St Moritz alpine chalet edit

Two villages, two tempos

Courchevel 1850 is reached from Geneva or from the small altiport above the village, and once you are there the geography is a single steep street. The Rue du Rocher runs from the Croisette, where the lifts leave, up past the boutiques to the hotels on the slope: Les Airelles, Le K2, Cheval Blanc, the Annapurna further along. Lunch is on the mountain at Le Cap Horn or back in the village at Le Tremplin, and the evening is a walk of two hundred metres between a bar and a dinner table. Everything is close and everything is uphill.

St Moritz is a different tempo. The village sits above the lake in the Engadin, three hours from Zurich by train through the Albula line or ninety minutes by car from Samedan’s airfield, and it spreads out: Badrutt’s Palace and the Kulm in the town, Suvretta House out on its own hill, the Corviglia lifts above and the frozen lake below, where the polo and the White Turf races fill the February weekends. Via Serlas is the shopping street, short and serious, with the houses lined up between the Palace and the funicular. Distances are longer, the air is drier, and the dress code is more formal at night than anywhere in the French Alps.

The base: cashmere on the skin

The Le Privé desk builds both wardrobes from the same base. Fine cashmere or merino against the skin, a crewneck over it, and the technical layer on top only when the day is actually technical. The crewneck is the piece that sees the most use: it is under the ski jacket on the lift at nine, on its own at lunch on a sun terrace at one, and under a coat at the bar at six. Loro Piana’s cashmere crewneck is the one on the Le Prive Network boutique list, and in the Alps it earns its place every day of the week.

Trousers are a stretch wool ski trouser for the mountain and a wool flannel or a heavy cotton cord for the village. The desk avoids anything with a logo at the thigh; both villages are full of people who can read a label from across a terrace and who find it more interesting when they cannot.

The jacket: short, warm, loud if you like

The après-ski jacket is the one moment in the alpine wardrobe where colour is allowed, and even encouraged. A short, padded flight jacket in red, cream or a strong blue reads correctly on the terrace at La Marmite on Corviglia or on the chairs outside Le Tremplin on the Croisette, and it is short enough to sit down in. Balenciaga’s flight jacket is the desk’s pick for the week: generous in the shoulder, cropped at the hip, and warm enough for the open air at four o’clock when the sun drops behind the Saulire.

Moncler Grenoble is the other name that runs through both villages, and for the technical days on the mountain its pieces are built for the job. The desk’s rule is one technical jacket for skiing, one flight jacket for the terrace, and no third option. The chalet cupboard is smaller than the wardrobe at home.

In the Alps the coat is the evening dress. Everything underneath it is for the fire.

The overcoat: the piece that does the nights

Nights in Courchevel are short walks in the cold between warm rooms, and nights in St Moritz are the same with a formal dinner at the end. The overcoat has to work for both. A long, double-breasted wool coat in black or charcoal, cut close through the shoulder and loose at the hem so it clears a boot, goes over the dinner jacket at the Palace and over a roll-neck at the bar of Le K2 without looking like it belongs to either. Saint Laurent’s wool overcoat is on the boutique list for exactly this: it is the one piece in the alpine trunk that would be just as correct on the Rue Saint-Honoré in January.

Under the coat, St Moritz evenings call for a dark suit or a dinner jacket at the big hotels and a cashmere roll-neck with flannel trousers everywhere else. Courchevel is less strict; a fine knit, dark trousers and a polished boot cover almost every table in the village. For women, a long knitted dress or a silk column under the coat works in both, with a heeled boot that can handle fifty metres of packed snow.

Boots, hats and the fur question

Boots are the detail the desk spends the most time on. The village boot has to grip ice, look right in a restaurant and come off easily at the chalet door. A shearling-lined leather boot with a rubber sole, in black or dark brown, is the compromise that works. The desk packs a second pair in a lighter colour for the sunny days on the terraces. Hats are cashmere beanies in the daytime and nothing at night; a hat indoors at Badrutt’s is noticed.

Fur is a personal decision and the desk leaves it there, with one observation: both villages have a long tradition of it, St Moritz especially, and the vintage and shearling alternatives are now good enough that the choice is about taste rather than warmth. A fur throw on a chair in the snow, as in the photographs for this edit, is the version the desk prefers.

The full alpine packing list, with the chalet contacts and the Via Serlas and Rue du Rocher boutique addresses, sits in the private edition at leprive.net for Le Privé members. The daily edit, including the week in Courchevel and St Moritz as it happens, runs at @leprive.network.

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