Five Fits With: James Ralston of The North Face
This week’s subject, James Ralston, might be unknown to you, but he has an extensive work history in and around the fashion industry; he’s even been in his share of street style photographs. After college, he began his buying career at the lowest rung, working his way up through merchandising, eventually landing in New York at the first job we shared together in the late, great Carson Street Clothiers. He then held various buying and merchandising roles—logging time at spots like Barneys and Club Monaco—before moving on to The North Face, where he works now. Taking the role as category manager meant a move from New York to Denver, Colorado, but being a huge skier and runner, it’s a great fit. I finally made my way out West to visit him and shoot my first non-New-York Five Fits.
Below, James and I discuss growing up in Portland, Oregon, how his personal style has changed between living in New York and Denver, what makes a brand like The North Face special and durable, and plenty more.
Fit One
Where are you from, and did it have any impact on your style journey?
I’m from Portland, Oregon, and yeah, I would say so. It’s not necessarily true only of Portland, Oregon, but when I was growing up in the ‘90s and early aughts, I was a big ski racer. I grew up doing it, and that had a lot of very specific style implications in the way you dress. During training, during free skiing, during races themselves—there were all sorts of style implications to it. That was the first opportunity for me to care about looking a certain way, or realizing that there are differences between the way people can dress. I guess you'd consider Oregon a gorp-y state, with the amount of rain that we get and the amount of outdoor activities that are popular there. I grew up using a lot of specific end-use clothing, so I have an understanding and an appreciation for those sorts of things and honoring them.
Fit Two
What does personal style mean to you? Has living in Denver versus New York changed how you approach personal style?
It's clothing that you have a right to wear. I remember I had this conversation about shoes. It was like, “What are other versions of the classic black suede shoe with a white sole?” There's the Vans Old Skool, there's a Converse One Star, there's a Nike Blazer, the Adidas Samba. All of those shoes are basically the same thing and you can like one or the other, but have you always worn that shoe? Did you used to skate in that shoe? Did you used to play tennis in that shoe? What is your relationship to that item? I really love the Adidas Sambas, but I can never wear a pair no matter what because I've never worn Adidas. I'm from Portland, so I can only ever claim to wear Nike. Personal style is clothing that is actually relevant to your life and not just clothes you personally like. I really love Kapital’s clothing, but I just cannot wear it. Nor Visvim.
Moving to Denver actually changed my apparel, not my personal style necessarily, but during the pandemic, everyone got into wearing normcore again—kind of inadvertently, because no one was really seeing each other. You don't really have an outfit to put on to go out and flex or whatever. Plus, the whole gorpcore thing was really peaking during the pandemic. In New York, that was the hot thing: to look like you lived in Denver. When I moved here, everyone already wore all of that stuff. It's like not a flex to wear any of those things. You just look normal. So, I started re-shopping my wardrobe for all of the super lit fashion stuff I collected over the years in New York and then started buying stuff again. All of my purchases lately have been non-normcore, pretty directional fashion things. Super useless things, basically.
Fit Three
It's interesting you talked about style but you only mentioned clothing, because I feel there has to be a philosophical element, too.
It depends on the context of the question. There are certain things that you could be into in your life that you're a part of or appeal to you, and that could definitely affect the way you dress as well. We've talked about this forever, but it was so lame when the band tee thing came back again. It comes back every several years. You're just seeing people with tour tees and you're like, “Man, you couldn't name a single song by that band. You don't have the right to wear that. You should not be allowed to purchase that.” Getting back to my original answer about my background growing up, it's weird to cosplay a mountaineer, but it's a massive trend, so everyone's doing it. Again, does your personal style involve your background? Like, you’re from Brooklyn…
Yeah, so I wear a pizza delivery uniform. What do you think makes The North Face special and what drew you to work for the company?
There are so few brands that can straddle the line and be both things to everyone, but it's that perfect combination of a brand that has such definable personal style and cultural relevance and is iconic in terms of design and letting function influence form. The reason we're known for our iconic pieces is not just because they fulfill an end use but because they look excellent. They're totally worth the money and they fulfill the end use, but they look sick and they have relevance beyond whatever they were built for. Most of those iconic pieces were built for alpinism but they're also being referenced in Biggie songs. They’re the perfect combination of form meeting function and being highly culturally relevant. The North Face is the leader in innovation of the different sports that we play in, whether it's like alpinism or trail running or snow—all the different things that we have this excellent athlete team that represents us for, we are really leading in those different apparel categories.
Fit Four
What are you inspired by lately?
I've been inspired by androgynous fashion and how to execute it in a very wearable way. I haven't really put my finger on exactly how to do that, but I know that I've seen a lot of people executing it in a way where I'm just like, “It's pretty cringe.” It's really hard to nail. I think part of it comes from working on some women's product at The North Face. I'll see pieces where I'm like, “I could wear that. That's actually kind of nice.” And trying to figure out a wearable way to wear pieces that do not necessarily fall into clean gender buckets. I’m kind of bored of silhouette options. Harry styles, for instance, the way he'll wear stuff is just trying so hard to be edgy. I'm inspired by trying to figure out how to wear traditionally feminine silhouettes—like a cropped top or something that's see-through, or a skirt, or a dress—in a way that's not meant to be edgy. And naturally it's going to be edgy to most people, but what's the least edgy way you could wear those things to where it doesn't feel like you're making some huge statement? Because I hate trying to make huge statements with dress.
Fit Five
If you had to wear one outfit for the rest of your life, what would it consist of?
It'd probably be a pair of wide-ish leg dress pants in black or gray. Either vintage T-shirt or very well-made T-shirt. And then some kind of well-fitting button-down with an easy pattern on it, like a stripe, or it could be solid. And then some piece of Craig Green, probably. I could wear that every day. As for footwear, probably a pair of Vans, light blue Eras.
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