99 Years of 66ºNorth – the Coolest Thing to Come Out of Iceland in a Century

Contrary to what its name might suggest, Iceland isn't the coldest place on earth – it has a temperate climate, albeit one prone to unpredictability and sometimes extreme, often abrupt changes. One of its coolest exports, 66°North, has kept Icelanders warm and shielded from its elements for almost a century, starting out in 1926 making protective gear for the country's fishermen whose pursuit of cod in the frigid waters of the North Atlantic Ocean was once the lifeblood of the country's economy.

Now, 99 years later, you can spot the brand's garments worldwide, its jackets no longer confined to the glaciers and black sand beaches that mark the island nation's borders, but scattered across urban landscapes on the shoulders of the weather-wary and the slightly-over-prepared from New York to Shanghai.

You'll find 66ºNorth fans moving in style conscious circles, too, lured in by its various fashion collaborations – that include the 2023 LVMH Prize semi-finalist, Charlie Constantinou, and GANNI – as much as its promise to keep them dry. This week, during Copenhagen Fashion Week, the brand will present its AW25 collection in a special open exhibition that also serves as the kick-off for a year of celebration around its 99th anniversary.

In 2022, 66ºNorth tapped Kei Toyoshima to be its creative director, reasserting its sartorial intentions by reeling in the talents of the former Bottega Veneta and Haider Ackermann designer. Later that year it opened a 7,500-square-foot flagship space in London's Regent Street – only its second retail store outside of Iceland – where it counts the likes of Marc Jacobs, Burberry and Stone Island as neighbors. Toyoshima, who is based in Paris and also moonlights for Louis Vuitton – listing "Menswear Designer @louisvuitton" in his Instagram bio – delivered his first outing for the Icelandic brand last year, a fashion-forward collection filled with oversized pieces inspired both by 66ºNorth's archive and slogan “Keeping Iceland Warm Since 1926”, as by the Japanese designer's heritage that comes across in the collection's muted yet confident palette.

But 66ºNorth is "not an outdoor brand," despite all of the base layers, down jackets and waterproof shells that it sells.

A selection of pieces from 66ºNorth's archive as the brand celebrates its 99th anniversary in 2025. [Photo: 66ºNorth]

A selection of pieces from 66ºNorth's archive as the brand celebrates its 99th anniversary in 2025. [Photo: 66ºNorth]

A selection of pieces from 66ºNorth's archive as the brand celebrates its 99th anniversary in 2025. [Photo: 66ºNorth]

A selection of pieces from 66ºNorth's archive as the brand celebrates its 99th anniversary in 2025. [Photo: 66ºNorth]

A selection of pieces from 66ºNorth's archive as the brand celebrates its 99th anniversary in 2025. [Photo: 66ºNorth]

Not, at least, according to its CEO Helgi Óskarsson. "I often get the question, 'What's the difference between 66ºNorth and other outdoor brands?'" he tells Hypebeast, "And my immediate answer is, 'We're not an outdoor brand.' Because that's not how we got started." Over lunch in London, the brand's chief executive is eager to emphasize its heritage as a purpose-driven maker of life-saving outerwear – a subtle, if crucial, distinction, he is keen to convey. "Just to survive in Iceland," he says, "you need performance every single day. We started dressing the fishermen and then very early on people started to use our workwear for every day." Whether by coincidence or by design, both the setting – a restaurant called Mountain – and the plates of fish that find their way to our table speak to the company's relationship with nature, one that goes some way to explain Óskarsson's point that 66ºNorth is not your average outerwear brand. It would be easy to consider the CEO's comment as just a flippant remark aimed at emphasizing the difference between his brand and its competitors, but reading between the lines it seems to us that his desire to not be pigeonholed stems from the very reason the company exists today: 66ºNorth was borne out of necessity nearly a hundred years ago, creating performance clothing that literally saved lives, and perhaps it would be a disservice to say it was just "an outdoor brand".

2022 was also the year that 66ºNorth achieved B-Corp certification – becoming the first Icelandic brand to do so – and in the world of outerwear brands it is what you'd call slow fashion. This becomes apparent as we speak with Óskarsson who outlines the pace at which 66ºNorth operates as yet another distinction between it and others like it. "Some brands, when they choose fabrics, they just browse through the kinds of the fabrics available, select some, and make a product," he claims, adding that "we go a step further, we meet with the research and development teams of our closest partners." One of these is Polartec, the American materials company known for inventing synthetic fleece. "Polartec's R&D people have been to Iceland a number of times. When they're developing something [new], we often test it for them in Iceland," he tells us, citing Polartec's Power Shield fabric as an example of one its innovations that 66ºNorth helped bring to market. "They might be testing in some other areas of the world as well," he acknowledges, but "Iceland is a fantastic laboratory."

"Iceland is a fantastic laboratory."

While 66ºNorth's garments aren't cheap, Óskarsson is unequivocal in his belief that the brand offers both the best performance and the best value for money. "We use the best possible fabrics for the garments that we make," he says, which will "cost us more money to produce." In fact, according to the chief executive the brand's clothes "should actually cost way more," but 66ºNorth would prefer to keep its prices competitive while offering the very best products. Choosing his words carefully when discussing other brands, he said, "I can promise you that if you were to take another brand that charges way more than we do for a similar garment, their quality will be either the same or even less than the quality we have." Ultimately, the proof is in the figurative 99-year-old pudding as Óskarsson points out, saying that customers have been "coming back, again and again and again" for the better part of a century.

Even when it comes to retail, 66ºNorth prefers to be slow and considered. "We take one step at a time and we try to think about the market holistically," remarks Óskarsson, who remains tight-lipped about where the brand's next store may open, but hints that it might be in New York. Outside of Iceland, 66ºNorth only has two retail destinations, one in London and the other in Copenhagen – and this is completely intentional. "If you would have asked me in 2014 where we would open next, I would probably have said the UK. If you would have asked me when, I would probably have answered that I don't know. These things just take time. We are a brand that wants to make sure that we don't do any shortcuts. We want to do things properly." Like most successful companies, data plays a big role for 66ºNorth and Óskarsson suggests that the company's expansion will in part be based on where he knows their customers are, sharing that sales from the US and China (according to credit card geo-data) consistently rank amongst the highest.

"The way I see it is that we've nurtured the Icelandic market for 100 years. It's 10 years since we opened the first store in Copenhagen and, eight years later, we opened in London. What has happened in Copenhagen for the last eight to 10 years is that we've built a very strong foothold with probably every retailer we'd like to work with."

Iceland, known as "the land of fire and ice", has one of the planet's most extreme geologies. It is 131 times larger than New York City and its 8.25 million people, but has a tiny-in-comparison population of less than 400,000 islanders. Yet, as Óskarsson speaks about 66ºNorth's story so far – and as we touch on what the future might hold for the brand – there is an appreciation for and a sense of responsibility towards both its heritage and its home nation that belies its size. Iceland is, truly, a unique place on the planet, and it feels like the brand has been shaped by the country just as glaciers have shaped its landscape.

At 66°North's global headquarters in Garðabær, a tiny Icelandic town close to Reykjavík, the brand is acutely aware that the products they create can often be difference between life and death, as is such with the jackets and various other pieces of clothing found in the precious sæluhús that pepper the Icelandic coastline – the Icelandic word for the emergency huts that provide shelter and house provisions left behind for the next person in need, a sort of life-critical version of "take a penny, leave a penny". The huts are maintained by Slysavarnarfélagið Landsbjörg, or the Icelandic Association for Search and Rescue (ICE-SAR), an organization that 66ºNorth has been in partnership since 1928 – a relationship almost as long as the the brand's entire existence.

Counting celebrity fans from Jay-Z to Justin Bieber, 66°North remains a private company co-owned by Óskarsson and his wife, Bjarney Harðardóttir, its Chief Brand Officer. It has charted its own course for close to a century and expanded internationally at its own pace while becoming a ubiquitous part of the island nation's wardrobe. "98.5% of all homes have 66°North product," Óskarsson tells us, "Even if it's just a hat or gloves or something."

See 66ºNorth at HBX.com here.

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