The North Face was re-releasing its F20 Steep Tech collection, technical outerwear built for extreme alpine conditions and later adopted by New York street culture and hip-hop. The challenge was to launch it in a way that honoured its performance heritage while making its streetwear legacy feel fresh, credible and culturally relevant to a new generation.
Steep Tech’s power sits in the tension between function and cultural status. Its double life as extreme ski gear and early urban favourite gives the collection real dual currency: technical credibility and street-level style. To reconnect with younger audiences, the launch needed to feel less like a product campaign and more like a re-entry point into 90s rap, street style and the creative collectives that came with it.
NERDS led the creative direction and treatment for the F20 Steep Tech launch shoot. We rooted it in modernised 90s hip-hop, casting London music and arts collective NiNE8 to bring real energy and creative credibility to the product. Across moving image, stills, styling, location and sound, we built a street-style lookbook that carried Steep Tech’s alpine heritage into a contemporary youth-culture context.
