THE NORTH FACE ULTRA FASTPACK III WOVEN ISPO Award winner

The footwear design and development teams at The North Face began work with my team at Aver Dennison almost two years in advance on what was to become their most innovative and best selling hike boot. Launching in Fall of 2018, the first woven Ultra Fast pack, consisted of Mid and Low styles in men’s and women’s sizes.

MY ROLE: 

• Customer outreach and business development

• Innovation and collaboration with footwear designers, developers and factory teams 

• Technique and texture pallets

• Textile / woven technique design

• Sampling / project management

• Material development and testing

• Sampling and revisions

• Color development 

Winner of the 2018 ISPO award for the Trekking Footwear category

The boot was recognized for it's unique and innovative upper material.

For the first trial, we just started with weaving the existing Ultra from the previous season. The Head of Development at TNF gave me total freedom to do whatever I wanted with it - "Just make it look like the sketch"  The caveat was that he didn't have any art, and not much of a pattern. I'd have to pull both from a tape up. 

I pulled together some techniques, structure textures etc. that suited the technical demands and started inputting them into the new designs. 

Seeing what was possible with this woven, the footwear designer went to work. And where there was no design, now there were more than enough designs.

With a real pattern completed, we sampled his two favorites each with two different structure/texture combo options.

Footwear Designer Bertrand Raccine poses next to the first round of photo in correct color.