North Face x Gucci: A Trailblazing Collaboration Uniting Outdoor Innovation & Luxury
In a move that has surprised some, Gucci and The North Face – brands that share similar history and values – have joined forces, and Sidetracked worked with them both to understand more about this unique collaboration. It’s about challenging expectations and celebrating the spirit of discovery.
To learn about the collaboration, we worked with renowned mountain photographer and filmmaker Jimmy Chin, who has been with The North Face for 20 years, and his friend the legendary actor and musician Jared Leto, who is close to Gucci’s creative director Alessandro Michele. Both are accomplished climbers. Both love spending time in the mountains and on the rock. When we put them together in the Joshua Tree National Park, the result was a fascinating insight into the world of cutting-edge climbing, the stories that we have always told about wild places, the nature of risk, and a deeper look at the brands that have created this most unusual of collaborations.
Special Features
Climbing amongst the rock towers of Joshua Tree National Park, Jared Leto and Jimmy Chin seek their place in the geology of stories that fill this ancient landscape – stories that inspire us, that fill us with a primal awe of the unknown, and that help us to understand the meaning of adventure.
At the end of 2020, we teamed up with Jared Leto and Jimmy Chin to showcase a new collaboration between The North Face and Gucci. After a climb and photoshoot in Joshua Tree National Park, we put the two Oscar winners in a (virtual) room to interview each other. What followed was a fascinating discussion on climbing ethics, Jared’s recent discovery of the sport, and a very near-death experience…
We take a closer look at the new #TheNorthFacexGucci collection that fuses ready-to-wear outdoor pieces with a retro aesthetic. The two brands cite a natural collaboration based on the shared values of adventure, freedom, respect for nature, and, above all, the spirit of exploration – whether literal exploration of places and cultures or adventure in a more metaphorical sense.
