“It’s been a truly collaborative project where I feel both partners learnt a lot from each other,” Bahnsen tells Vogue Business on Zoom, the day she arrives in Paris ahead of the show, which takes place on 25 September. “In the high-performance scene and with their technicality, [The North Face] are truly nerds within their field, which we are as well.”
The collaboration — which has been in the works for a year and a half — echoes this season’s trend of pairing cocktail dresses with technical outerwear on the runway, as seen in London and Milan. It also channels fashion’s move into creating technical fashion for city life. “[It] really tells the story about how we wear the collection and makes that storyline very easily translatable for the customer,” Bahnsen says. “You want that perfect raincoat to protect your dress, you want those trainers or boots for your weekend walk. It says a lot about our brand and the philosophy of how you’re not too precious about the [collection], you need to live in it and enjoy it and feel comfortable to go about your day and still feel fabulous. As a female designer designing for women, comfort and ease is super important for me.”
For The North Face, it’s a way to tap into new audiences. “At The North Face, exploration is at the heart of everything we do. Whether it’s pushing the limits in the outdoors or through creative collaborations, it’s how we discover new perspectives. Partnering with experts in different fields has always been a key part of our story,” says David Whetstone, director of global collaborations and energy at The North Face. “We admire Cecilie Bahnsen for her unique approach to design. We’ve focused on evolving the fit, shape and texture [of the reimagined classics] while keeping the functionality and durability The North Face is known for.”
In a landscape that is facing an excess of collaborations — some veering into the absurd — Bahnsen’s strategy is to build long-term partnerships. Alongside Asics, the brand has previously collaborated with the likes of Tokyo-based functional footwear brand Suicoke. The ongoing Asics collab, now in its fifth iteration, is particularly popular, and is a testament to how functionality sits at the heart of the Danish brand. At New York Fashion Week earlier this month, the brand hosted a retail pop-up tied to its Asics collab as it seeks to strengthen its position in the US.
“This partnership [with The North Face] is part of a bigger strategy to continue to elevate the brand and explore new categories, building out the Cecilie Bahnsen universe with a mix of highly curated brands we’d love to work with,” says new CEO Mie Marie Ejdrup, who joined on 1 September from investment fund Pitzner Group Holding, where she was executive director of investments and advisory (she previously held positions at Pandora and Bain).
Ejdrup says the brand has a global rollout strategy for the collaboration with The North Face planned, including retail activations, pop-ups and other activities. “It’s not a matter of creating a splash around Paris Fashion Week,” she says. “It’s about creating these long-lasting relationships where we can build a brand and community together over time.”
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