Gucci is collaborating with The North Face for a collection that celebrates the spirit of exploration: #TheNorthFacexGucci. Be it the literal exploration of places and cultures or the more metaphorical adventures encouraged today by creative director Alessandro Michele, Gucci has always celebrated the curious, presenting their clothing as tools that push the wearer to different territories.
The North Face dresses adventure seekers. But there are also deeper parallels between Gucci’s stories and his new partner. Since its founding in San Francisco in 1966, the brand has been committed to pioneering product innovation and enabling all forms of exploration. It is a well-recognized notion that travel leads to self-discovery, which similarly empowers people in their quest to celebrate and express their own characters and personalities.
To promote The North Face x Gucci, Alessandro Michele has conceived a campaign filmed by Daniel Shea, set in the Alps. Using stills and video, as well as through content created for TikTok, they guide us through a trip in the great outdoors with a group of Gucci-clad hikers.
The forests and peaks of the region form a vast and impressive scenic backdrop for the images, capturing colorful spontaneous moments of group activity reminiscent of Christmas snapshots. The atmosphere of the campaign evokes the aesthetic of the 1970s, when The North Face was a thriving outdoor retailer based in Berkeley, CA, and shared a factory and store adjacent to Credence Clearwater Revival’s rehearsal studio, whose iconic song “Bad Moon Rising” appears throughout the video campaign.
This special cross-category collection for men and women includes ready-to-wear, soft accessories, luggage, and footwear, plus some more unexpected pieces tied to the outside world of The North Face, such as tents and sleeping bags.
The North Face x Gucci Collection is committed to eco-sustainability. The luggage contains ECONYL®, a nylon fabric made from reclaimed materials like fishing nets, carpets, and other waste, that can be recycled and recreated. Garment and transport bags, boxes, and bags have been strategically designed to reduce environmental impact at every step of creation. All paper and cardboard come from sustainably managed forest sources and uncoated paper has been used to ensure it is fully recyclable. To reduce the amount of paper, the boxes are equipped with handles to avoid the use of shopping bags.
Illuminating the motifs of the collection, Gucci Artwalls will be presented in five cities – Hong Kong, Shanghai, London, New York, and Milan – and will feature dedicated images featuring a variety of creative executions. Although all different, these pieces of street art will incorporate the collection logo.
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Gucci has also commissioned artist Sean Vegezzi to delve into the idea of the literal and the metaphorical of adventures through a documentary video.
Vegezzi takes his passion for the great outdoors into the desert of the Alps and creates a world where beauty and function coexist. Taking into account the design and production processes that shaped the collection, the film reveals the pieces through the eyes of those who made them possible, featuring conversations with Gucci Creative Director Alessandro Michele as well as David Whetstone, The North Face Design Manager Global Collaborations, Archives, and Special Projects.
Throughout the documentary, the natural power of the landscape functions as a character in its own right, enlivening the products with their striking colors, tactile textures, and technical fabrics and details, all of which speak eloquently of the world of hiking and mountaineering, and, as in the words of Alessandro Michele, “The shamanic power to push you to different territories”.
SEE THE DOCUMENTARY:
#TheNorthFacexGucci
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