How The North Face established streetwear's essential oversized insulation jacket for the season.

For our first project working with The North Face - part of VF Corporation - the brand challenged us to create a new narrative for the Retro Himalayan Parka jacket, whilst respecting the stories and innovation from its past. The brief covered the UK and four other key European markets. 

The North Face delivers a huge range of performance apparel, equipment, and footwear. They consistently push the boundaries of innovation so consumers can push the boundaries of exploration. They remain the first choice of the world's most accomplished climbers, mountaineers, extreme skiers, snowboarders, endurance runners and explorers.

CHALLENGE

Blending heritage looks with up-to-the-minute performance

How do you appeal to serious adventurers and city commuters whilst blending a heritage, retro looking jacket with the latest in performance technology?

The three-layer shell Retro Himalayan Parka jacket is loaded with a massive 700-fill of responsibly sourced down to deliver full-on winter warmth wherever either of these consumers groups would like to explore.

Our task was to communicate how the jacket can protect alpinists and adventurers whilst also being a streetwear staple for urban explorers and city commuters. It’s a jacket filled with stories, and we needed to bring the heritage to life with a modern, performance-driven twist.

OUR APPROACH 

Three core creative pillars drove our approach throughout the project.

Firstly – heritage. Using parallax, we were able to integrate archive imagery from The North Face’s extensive bank of adventurer content.

Secondly – innovation. We recognised the importance of showcasing the product details and insulation and utilised our in-house 3D production team to produce scenes representing FUTURELIGHT and 700-fill Down technology. 

Thirdly – the twist. We wanted to bring the piece of content together with an urban infrared treatment.

The creative outcomes were driven by using a mixture of live-action production, 3D animation and visual effects, combining the modern technology of FUTURELIGHT™ and 700 Fill Down with heritage expedition content and an urban studio environment.

Using advanced visual effect techniques such as data-moshing, we were able to seamlessly tell the story of The North Face's signature jacket from its routes in mountaineering heritage through to the present day.

RESULTS

The creative concept for the project brought together the heritage mountaineering look with performance technology.

The creative outcomes were driven by using a mixture of live-action production, 3D animation and visual effects, combining the modern technology of FUTURELIGHT™ and 700 Fill Down with heritage expedition content and an urban studio environment.

Using advanced visual effect techniques such as data-moshing, we were able to seamlessly tell the story of The North Face's signature jacket from its routes in mountaineering heritage through to the present day.