This outdoor brand photographed one person from every year of its 100-year history
Icelandic outdoor brand 66°North is marking 100 years with a portrait exhibition — one subject born in every year since its founding in 1926, each with a personal connection to the brand.
Founded in 1926 to clothe fishermen working the North Atlantic, 66°North has grown alongside Iceland itself.
To mark 100 years, the brand conducted an open casting call before spending the past year travelling across the country to photograph its participants.
The result is a cross-section of Icelandic life: fishermen, farmers, doctors, musicians and grandparents, each pictured wearing their own 66°North piece.
It sidesteps the artifice of a typical brand campaign and becomes something closer to a sociological record.
The portraits collectively make the case that 66°North occupies a rare position in Icelandic culture: a brand worn across generations not out of loyalty to a label, but out of genuine habit and need.
The exhibition, titled ‘100 Years’, is on display at HERMA on Hverfisgata as part of DesignMarch (Iceland’s annual design festival) where it sits naturally within a programme focused on craft, identity and cultural heritage.
For a brand whose origin story is built on function rather than fashion, this is a centenary campaign with restraint and creative confidence.
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