The North Face Marks 60 Years

Two new Nuptse jackets, one built for high-altitude climbing and one reversible, arrive with a cast that runs from an Olympic climber to a New York DJ trio.

When The North Face reached its 60th anniversary this year, the product it put at the center of the celebration was a jacket only 34 years old. The Nuptse arrived in 1992, and the anniversary now rests on two new versions of it, the Summit Series Nuptse and the Pertex Reversible Nuptse, introduced with an advertising campaign built around athletes and brand ambassadors.

The name comes from a Himalayan peak southwest of Everest, where “Nup” means west and “Tse” means peak. The jacket began as part of the company’s Expedition System, a layering setup for high altitude, and its oversized baffles and boxy shape suited that job. It then took a second life in cities, where New York rappers and skateboarders wore it against the winter cold. Chris Goble, the company’s global brand president, described the anniversary jackets as a way of honoring that legacy while “boldly evolving it for a new generation.”

Signal. What happened: The North Face introduced two new Nuptse jackets for its 60th anniversary and backed them with a global campaign featuring a DJ collective, a mountaineer, a rock climber and a snowboarder, plus a separate China campaign fronted by an actor. Exact object: the Summit Nuptse, built with 800-fill ProDown and offset baffles, and the Pertex Reversible Nuptse, a two-sided jacket with 700-fill recycled down. When and where: the Summit Nuptse reached The North Face UK in early September at £540 in four colors, with a €600 listing on the European site and a $700 women’s version on the US site; the Pertex Reversible Nuptse is $430 in men’s and women’s versions on the US site. Why it matters: the Nuptse is the brand’s best-known street sil, and the anniversary lineup splits it into a mountaineering version and a daily-wear version for different buyers. Earlier: a cover of The North Face Purple Label x BEAMS.

This is not the first time the Nuptse has been marked with a birthday edition. For its 25th anniversary in 2017, the company re-released replicas of the 1992 jacket in its original tint-blocked styles, and a 30th anniversary run in 2022 added a 1992 patch on the right sleeve and an interior panel printed with the Fall 1992 catalogue cover and the jacket’s origin story. Both looked backward. The 60th anniversary pair pushes the design toward two distinct uses instead. The baseline both depart from is the 1996 Retro Nuptse, which sells for $380 in men’s and women’s versions and is filled with 700-fill goose down to the Responsible Down Standard. The company’s own copy for that jacket stresses a classic boxy sil, a cushion softness from the oversized baffles and a relaxed hem without a tight cinch at the waist, with zip hand pockets and sizes up to 3XL. Both new jackets add an internal hem cinch, a small sign of how far each has been pulled from that template.

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The Summit Nuptse sits in the company’s Summit Series, its mountaineering line, and it reads as a return to the jacket’s original purpose. The oversized body and contrasting shoulder panel stay, but the simple horizontal chambers of the classic give way to offset Cloud Down baffles that give the down more room to loft and cut cold spots. Inside them is 800-fill water-repellent ProDown, a step up from the 700-fill used in the 1996 Retro Nuptse.

The shell is split by function. Spectra ripstop, a blend of recycled nylon and ultra-high-molecular-weight polyethylene fibers, covers the yoke, collar and hood, the areas most likely to take abrasion from climbing and pack straps. Lightweight 30 g/m² recycled nylon covers the rest, and both fabrics carry a non-PFC water-repellent finish. The hood is adjustable, fits over a climbing helmet and stows in a zipped collar compartment. The main zip opens from the bottom as well as the top, so a climber can ventilate while wearing a harness, and the hand pockets sit where they stay reachable under gear.

The remaining specs are practical rather than showy: two internal mesh drop-in pockets, an internal hem cinch, stretch-knit cuffs and a lightweight stuff sack. The jacket averages 554 grams. The same Cloud Down construction was already used on a bulkier parka in the Summit Series.

Pricing varies by market. The men’s jacket costs £540 in four colors in the UK and is listed at €600 on the European site, while the women’s version is $700 on The North Face’s US site. When the men’s model launched in September, the US site listed it as out of stock.

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The Pertex Reversible Nuptse goes the other way, trading altitude for versatility. It costs $430 in both men’s and women’s versions on the US site. One face is Pertex Quantum, a light, soft, down-proof fabric that adds wind and water resistance, and the reverse is a 39 g/m² recycled nylon. Both faces carry a fluorine-free water-repellent finish. The fill is 700-fill recycled waterfowl down, with a synthetic insulation overlay listed alongside it. The company’s pitch is two distinct looks from one jacket, with the Pertex face also cutting down on down leakage.

The construction details lean toward daily wear: a relaxed fit, a reversible center-front zip, no shoulder seams to cut bulk under a pack, articulated sleeves, rounded-corner hand pockets, elastic-bound fold-over cuffs and an internal hem cinch-cord. Embroidered logos sit on the left chest and the back right shoulder, and the center back length is 26 inches. The men’s version comes in Dark Chestnut, Deep Burgundy, Lead and TNF Blue, each paired with TNF Black, while the women’s version comes in Lead, TNF Blue and Garnet, also paired with TNF Black.

The Nuptse has been offered in reversible form before, in fall 2023, so the format is not new to the line.

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The campaign cast covers two very different circuits, nightlife and mountaineering. Las Flaquitas is a New York DJ trio made up of Jessica Gjoza, Kaila Burke-Ozuna and Tatiana Varchola, friends since the first year of high school in 2013. They began booking as Las Flaquitas in the spring of 2023, after a trip to the Dominican Republic. The name is Spanish slang for a slim girl, a term they heard in both New York and the Dominican Republic. By July 2024 they were playing a Boiler Room set at the Brooklyn Mirage, and their sets move across hip-hop, house and reggaeton.

Brooke Raboutou grew up in Boulder, Colorado, in a family of climbers. As a teenager she became the youngest woman to reach the 5.13 and 5.14 grades outdoors, and she is the 2024 Olympic silver medalist in climbing, the first American woman to win an Olympic climbing medal. In spring 2025 she became the first woman, and the tenth climber overall, to climb the 9b+ (5.15c) grade, on Excalibur in Italy.

Jim Morrison is an American ski mountaineer who, on October 15, 2025, became the first person to ski the Hornbein Couloir on the north face of Mount Everest, a line that had resisted attempts for decades. He climbed the face with a team of ten other mountaineers and a documentary filmmaker before skiing down, a descent that took about four hours. The route was a plan he had shared with his late partner, the ski mountaineer Hilaree Nelson, and a documentary about the run is in the works.

David Babacar Djité is a Swiss snowboarder born in Zurich who rides out of Laax. He has ridden since he was three, has described snowboarding as an art form in which he is the artist rather than the athlete, and has studied psychology alongside riding.

Putting climbers and DJs in the same Nuptse advertising has a precedent. A campaign for the jacket’s 25th anniversary in 2017 paired a summit alpinist with DJs and a collector, built around short spots that pointed viewers to a four-minute film, and its creative lead described it as the first time the urban side of the jacket had been made explicit. In 2026 that pairing is the premise rather than the surprise.

 

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In China the campaign is led by actor and singer Yunrui Li, who serves as The North Face’s brand ambassador there and fronts the regional campaign. Chinese-language press knows him as Li Yunrui (李云睿), with roles in Creation of the Gods I: Kingdom of Storms, Love Like the Galaxy and The Last Immortal.

His profile extends beyond outerwear. Tiffany & Co. named him an ambassador in February, when he had about 7.8 million followers on Weibo. The global cast of athletes and DJs and the China campaign run side by side, with the same two jackets underneath both.

The brand’s China playbook already reaches past outdoor enthusiasts. An earlier winter campaign, Face The North Face, was created with the agency Fred & Farid Shanghai and aimed at a broader urban audience across tier one cities, opening with a 30-second anthem film shown in 263 cinemas across 12 cities.

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Set side by side, the three tiers form a price ladder on The North Face’s US site. The 1996 Retro Nuptse is $380, the Pertex Reversible Nuptse is $430, and the women’s Summit Nuptse is $700. The gap between the reversible and the Summit jacket is $270, and the spec sheets show where it goes: 800-fill ProDown, offset baffles, Spectra reinforcement and a helmet-compatible hood on one side, a second face and a Pertex Quantum shell on the other.

Further down, the Nuptse name now covers a $145 pair of traction booties, a $200 baby one-piece, a $260 men’s vest and a $330 women’s short jacket. At the time of writing, The North Face’s US site lists 68 products under the Nuptse banner.