Interview

DOING MORE WITH LESS

Recap of a one-hour conversation with Nur Abbas, design director at Goldwin 0 by Gert Jonkers

(Tuesday, December 17, 2024)

Gert: Do you live a fast life?
Nur: A fast life? I do often feel like I’m rushing with the work that I do, the different projects we’re working on, my family; there never seems to be enough hours in the day. But Portland certainly has its own lower pace. It doesn’t feel like a big city that has to offer all kinds of different things.

Gert: How do you commute to work? Do you walk, or ride a bicycle?
Nur: I live just over the hills and if I’m feeling particularly athletic I can cycle to work. But, as most people do here, I usually drive. The typical North American commute.

Gert: Do you find time to enjoy the outdoors?
Nur: The trees and mountains and the wilderness around here are certainly calling all the time. The famous thing about Portland is that if you want to go to the coast, it’s only an hour and a half drive, and if you want to go to the mountains, it’s only an hour and half drive there, too. It’s pretty accessible for all sorts of nature. It’s beautiful and wild and rugged. Have you seen ‘The Goonies’?

Gert: I haven’t.
Nur: That’s Oregon’s claim to fame, and it was all filmed on the Oregon coast. So, yes, we do try to go out there. At the studio we’re saying we should go for a hike at least every Friday morning, to take in the outdoors and practice what we preach about the clothes we’re designing. One of my goals is to climb Mount Hood, the local mountain. A couple of years ago I climbed Mount St. Helens, which is achievable for most people although you do need a certain amount of physical fitness. I’d hate to be in a situation where I didn’t have the fitness to enjoy life and nature and to be able to go out and explore the world around me.

Gert: Would you call yourself a sports fanatic?
Nur: No. There’s a bit of contradiction here. I’ve never really been that into sports, and I used to dread the days back at school when we’d have to go and play rugby on a cold, rainy day. I was always more interested in drawing and designing and making things. Years ago, when I went to work for Nike, the first thing that people would ask me was “What’s your sport? What do you play?” And I wouldn’t have an answer. I’m more interested in how to use your body and how to enjoy nature, that kind of thing.

Gert: You don’t have a favourite football team?
Nur: No, but there’s this other side of sports that I think has gotten more and more prominent in recent years, which is about well-being and a more personal way of doing things that doesn’t involve the idea of competition. The companies that realise that are the ones that are doing very well, as opposed to companies that are stuck in this old paradigm of competition and who or what is the ultimate athlete. I’m interested in sports because I’m interested in the human body and how it works, and how I can find solutions for people to function and feel better. Before I had any interest in fashion I thought I would go into medicine and become a doctor. I was always fascinated by anatomy and how the body works. That’s been the big shift for me, from having worked in fashion where I was always inspired by outdoor gear, rolling that into the work I did at places like Gucci and Louis Vuitton, to actually getting closer to the source of where technology revolves around the outdoors. My time at Nike was the catalyst of that, and with Goldwin we look at how you can use technology for extra comfort and protection. Like, how can we use insulation or wicking fabric? How can we develop the right gear to make someone feel more comfortable and explore the outdoors further? In fashion it often comes down to how it looks on the runway,　whereas what we do now, it has to work.

Gert: Do you remember how you first got to know Goldwin?
Nur: Over the years I’ve been lucky to visit Japan regularly while I was working at Vuitton and Nike and Uniqlo, and I was always looking at what The North Face Japan was doing with their Purple Label. Why was this stuff so much better than what I could find in Europe or America? The quality was so much better and everything was just a bit more considered. It just felt like everything was pushed a little further. Then a few years later I discovered Goldwin and someone explained to me that it was the parent company of The North Face Japan and nanamica, and I was, like, ah, okay, now I understand! Here was a set of people that really cared passionately about creating the best possible gear and apparel for the outdoors, using the best technologies with the utmost care; “Dedication to detail.” So with Goldwin 0, the question was, what can we add to that? They’re already doing a great job. How do you take that kind of knowledge, the expertise, the amazing pattern cutters and the amazing fabric resources, and look at it through a slightly different lens informed by my time working in fashion?

Gert: Would I still be able to climb up Mount St. Helens in a Goldwin 0 jacket?
Nur: That’s the idea. It’s not necessarily designed with that purpose in mind, but it’s certainly a byproduct of the fact that Goldwin has the right manufacturing techniques and the right fabrics, the thermoregulation, all the extras.

Gert: I know it’s like asking a parent who their favourite child is, but still, do you have a favourite piece in the new Goldwin 0 collection?
Nur: I’m very proud of the outerwear pieces. I’ve always been a bit of an outerwear nerd. But funnily enough, one of my favourite pieces in the new collection isn’t new, because it’s a carryover from the previous season. We call it the Field Shell Jacket, which is a GORE-TEX rain shell that’s cut a little longer, with a draw-cord hem. It was already great last season in a really nice fabric. I felt like it was perfect.Goldwin really appreciated it and they made a few modifications and suggestions to make it even better: they found a lighter fabric and a slightly better way to attach the fastening, and it indeed turned out better! Which is this very Japanese thing of continual improvement.

Gert: I read this intriguing phrase in a Goldwin 0 product description: “Complex structure, simple design.”
Nur: That’s something I often think about, this idea of complexity versus simplification. Because Goldwin has the manufacturing expertise, the factories, the developers, it allows us to do things that I was never able to do with my own brand, gnuhr, or even with Vuitton. The specialism is often complex, it takes many different people, machines and processes to make something that’s really good. I feel like a lot of tech companies work like that. Apple strips away as much as they can to wrap up their complexity in some really simple packaging. That’s what I think you get when you buy a Goldwin 0 jacket – a lot of complexity has gone into the making of it, but I hope it’s easy and comfortable and not complicated. It shouldn’t look complicated. It shouldn’t look like it’s difficult.

Gert: Are you a big reader? What are you reading at the moment?
Nur: I listen to books on my daily commute. Right now I’m listening to Ursula K. Le Guin, the sci-fi writer – she used to be a Portland native. I also read and listen to a lot of science books. I just read a book about time – ‘The Order of Time’ by Carlo Rovelli – which was fascinating although I don’t know if I understood all of it. Another author that I like, Martin Amis, had a great quote at the start of one of his books: “I don’t know much about science, but I know what I like.” That’s my approach to science. I was always interested in medicine and biology and the natural world. I’m no expert, but I love documentaries and science books.

Gert: Do you go to museums?
Nur: I love natural history museums and that’s one thing I miss here in Portland. One of my favourite places in the world is the National Museum of Natural History in Paris. Their Gallery of Palaeontology and Comparative Anatomy is amazing.

Gert: Is that the one in the park in the fifth arrondissement?
Nur: Exactly. It’s just the most wonderful experience when you walk in there, they have all these skeletons and different animals, it’s such a powerful installation. I also love the Natural History Museum in London. Whenever a city has a natural history museum, I’ll try and visit.

Gert: Books, museums – do you like music?
Nur: Music is the biggest thing here in our studio. We’re constantly listening, sharing, talking about music. I used to go to gigs a lot more when I was younger, but I went to this amazing concert recently by, oh god, what’s his name? It’ll come back to me. I really believe in the connection between music and fashion – there’s a parallel between the intuitive way of composing music and putting together an outfit or a design. It’s hard to say why something sounds good, or why something works or looks good. You can’t rationalise it in a scientific sense.

Gert: What are you listening to today?
Nur: I’m very keen to listen to the new Aphex Twin album that was released today. It’s two and a half hours of live recordings, Gert: What are you listening to today? Nur: I’m very keen to listen to the new Aphex Twin album that was released today. It’s two and a half hours of live recordings, outtakes and rare releases. That’s going to be the first thing we’ll listen to today. Maybe it’s a nostalgic thing. It’s the music from my youth, from the nineties. I really want to remember the name of the composer that we saw in concert recently. He played in a church and there was also an amazing light installation in the space.outtakes and rare releases. That’s going to be the first thing we’ll listen to today. Maybe it’s a nostalgic thing. It’s the music from my youth, from the nineties. I really want to remember the name of the composer that we saw in concert recently. He played in a church and there was also an amazing light installation in the space.

Gert: Please do email me when you remember his name.
Nur: I will, I’m sure you’ll appreciate him. ‘The Disintegration Loops’ is the title of one of his albums… William Basinski, that’s his name! He does a lot of things with tape loops. Very ethereal. I think these were tapes that he still had from back in the eighties. I’ve been listening to his music for a long time but I’d never seen him play live or heard him talk. He came out looking like the epitome of an aging rockstar: long hair, skinny jeans, high heeled boots, and he played these very subtle ethereal tape loops in a church. It was a spiritual experience. And again a nice contradiction between the way he looks and the way he sounds.

Gert: Could you give me the brief version of your biography?
Nur: How brief do you want it?

Gert: How about Nur Abbas in 50 words?
Nur: Wow! Let me think… I was born and raised in the UK. My parents were originally from Iraq, they spoke Arabic at home, and a big part of our culture was Arabic. So I don’t know if I ever felt fully British, which is probably one of the reasons why it was easy for me to leave the UK and live in France, or now in the US. I’d say Portland is my home. This is where I live, I have my family here, my son was born here, I have my business here. But of all the cities in the world, I’m probably most familiar with Paris. I love making clothes that have a purpose and a function, clothing for activity or sports, but, as I said before, I’m not that interested in sports.

Gert: What is this mesmerising website onlylight.com that I found?
Nur: That’s interesting. I sometimes wonder if anybody ever still looks at it. I’m a bit of a tech nerd and I bought that domain around 2000 – almost 25 years ago now – and with very simple code I created my own website. At the time I was doing a lot of illustrations and drawings and I started collecting them there. I don’t think I’ve updated it for at least 10 years. Maybe it’s the hoarder side of me that means I still hang on to this relic of my former online life, from before social media existed. It was like a feed of
images before feeds of images were a thing.

Gert: And why the name, onlylight?
Nur: My name, Nur, means light in Arabic, in terms of luminosity. And then I was playing with language a bit, and Nur in German means only. Onlylight! Then I love how, in English, light can also refer to weight and levity. With my own brand, gnuhr, we design products focusing on ultralight backpacking. We think a lot about how we can go further and faster more comfortably.

Gert: Do you constantly weigh your designs when you’re making things? Like, if you have to choose between two zippers, and one zipper is 12 grams and the other is 14 grams, you pick the 12-gram zipper?
Nur: A hundred percent! Weight is always a consideration. Even in fashion, one of the first things you look at when you choose a fabric is its weight – it’s written on every swatch. And, for me, the idea of ultralight isn’t necessarily just the physical property of mass or weight but also this mindset of how do you simplify? The whole idea of ultralight hiking is that you don’t need to bring that much. You don’t carry three changes of clothes or an extra meal – all these things that people usually carry with them for comfort. You can actually have a more comfortable experience when you’re not carrying all that weight, when you literally don’t have that baggage.

Gert: I love that. Some of my favourite holidays have been just walking out of the house with a tiny backpack, filled only with a phone charger, one spare T-shirt and a pair of socks, and go! Nur: That’s one of the things I love about it. To go backpacking is to leave everything behind. There’s a simplicity to life on the trail when you’ve reduced it all to the absolute bare minimum. You feel free because you don’t have that weight with you, but you also have a mental freedom because you’re not worried about all these things. I’m a terrible hoarder when it comes to everyday life, with rails and rails of clothes because you think you’ll need them as a reference one day, and lots and lots of books. So, letting go of all of that, at least for a few days at a time, is one of the best experiences.

Gert: It’s the ideal – living light.
Nur: I think I heard once that people “pack for their fears.” You pack extra food because you fear being hungry. You pack extra clothes because you fear being cold. But if you can let go of that, I don’t think the world is that scary a place. You can actually get by very well with very few things. That’s the basis of our studio. We’re working with an exponentially increased focus on how we can take away things as opposed to what we can add – finding solutions that can simplify life.

Gert: Watch out! You might be reducing your designs so much that eventually everything disappears.
Nur: Oh yes! There’s a Buckminster Fuller quote that I love: “To do more and more with less and less until eventually you can do everything with nothing.”

Gert: Amazing. I once had an enlightening experience when I travelled to New York City and my suitcase went missing. I was annoyed, of course, but it turned out that life was so much easier without any belongings.
Nur: It’s the big contradiction. I feel like I’m always looking for a balance: I make activewear, but I’m not so into sports. I’m a bit of a hoarder and a true materialist, yet I’m looking for simplicity. I think there’s a very fundamental human experience in all these contradictions.

NUR ABBAS IS DESIGN DIRECTOR AT GOLDWIN 0. HE LIVES AND WORKS IN PORTLAND, OREGON.
GERT JONKERS IS EDITOR IN CHIEF AND PUBLISHER OF FANTASTIC MAN.