The North Face Celebrates All the Faces of Exploration
NEW YORK — While it continues to provide technically advanced apparel and footwear for the outdoor enthusiast, The North Face has increasingly become a favorite among influencers and the trend-setting streetwear crowd. Its collaborations with Comme des Garçons’s Junya Watanabe, Sacai, Supreme, Publish, Vans and others have helped bring the label into new territory.
On Wednesday night, The North Face hosted a dinner for Tei Shi, a Colombian indie pop singer and songwriter at its East Village showroom that it billed as “a wonderful collision of fashion, food and music.”
The event also helped celebrate Tei Shi’s new album, “Crawl Space,” and served to preview the fall urban line as well as pieces from the brand’s collaborations.
Peter Valles, The North Face’s vice president of global creative, said that while the brand’s motto is “Never Stop Exploring,” it can have several meanings.
“We need to challenge what we do, not who we are,” he said. “And we look at ‘exploration’ as more of a mind-set where we can push the boundaries of art, culture and music, too.”
Tei Shi, whose real name is Valerie Teicher, “embodies that with her music,” Valles said, “so it’s a pretty cool connection.”
Teicher said she’s been a North Face fan for “a long time. I lived in Canada where it’s very cold and I definitely needed their coats. But the relationship really started at South by Southwest,” where she was performing and also appeared in a photo shoot for the line.
So the dinner in New York was an extension of that relationship and also an opportunity for The North Face to further connect with Teicher’s circle.
“I invited around 10 friends who were involved in the album,” she said, “and the others were invited by The North Face.”
The group was treated to a menu of Colombian favorites that Teicher helped create. “I’m from Colombia so it is near and dear to my heart,” she said. “And it was really fun to help direct and curate the menu.”
The food choices were inspired by the music on “Crawl Space,” which is her first full-length album. “It came out on March 31, and honestly, it’s such a surreal feeling, I’m still processing it.”
To promote the record, she said she’ll doing a summer tour before heading into a heavy schedule in the fall.
In the meantime, she’s working on offering videos and visual content connected to the album and has started working on new music as well, she said.
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