city to summit

Performance and craft run hand in hand between norda™ and Reigning Champ, to serve the trail running community from city to summit.

Our collaboration with Reigning Champ celebrates the act of running, the pure movement of it which transcends environments, whether it be within cityscapes or trails.To communicate the timelessness of running, we derived inspiration from Eadweard Muybridge, who was the first to capture running on film. By bringing the specific instant of the act into all time, Muybridge’s “running man” opened a new universe of media and expression that has allowed humans to develop and learn in unprecedented ways. Muybridge’s “running man” doesn’t simply capture a moment in the past—it makes the past coterminous with our ever-moving present.

The man is running in 1887 (as part of Muybridge’s Animal Locomotion series) and runs still with us in 2023. The minimal grid background accentuates the timelessness, leaving us nothing to contemplate except the bare, unaccommodated act of running. In addition, we found resonance with our commitments to craftsmanship. The grid reflects the weave patterns in both norda™ and Reigning Champ materials and reflects our mutual belief that running need not be relegated to any singular tapestry of terrain. Our campaign pulls this running man into the multitude of environments through which we are transported by the act of running.

Muybridge’s images sum up a universal human condition, hurtling from who-knows-where to who-knows-where, without any concrete measurable progress. Our aim was simply to design and deliver gear to help you define the act of running.

Shop the NORDA X REIGNING CHAMP collection