Robert Newman

A deep dive into GORE-TEX by Document Studios for SNS Illustration by Gangbox

After graduating from his Westminster University MA in 2018, Robert have added a short but powerful ‘Who’s Who in Menswear’ list of employers to his CV. Having worked with C.P. Company and Maharishi straight out of Uni, today the Glasgow-based designer consults for Supreme and Stone Island and is preparing to launch his own brand, Middle Distance.

Can you remember the first time you heard about GORE-TEX?

I grew up in the West Country, in southwestern England, going to steam fairs with my dad where the uniform was a lot of military surplus GORE-TEX. Later on, I spent a lot of time cycling around to visit stone circles in the rain and at the point, when I started to have my own money, I bought a completely knackered US Army GORE-TEX desert Camo ECWCS parka from Marcruss, an army surplus in Bristol.

When did you start working with GORE-TEX professionally?

Probably only in the last three or four years, since I’ve begun to work with bigger brands. It’s always been a staple of a lot of the companies I’ve worked with, both for its function but also its talismanic value; it comes with a whole history and mythology that goes back to around the same time as the groundwork for this new thing called streetwear was being laid. I very much see my work as part of that lineage, so working with those fabrics has been a privilege.

GORE-TEX is very much interlinked with functionality - what role does functionality and purpose play in your work?

It’s kind of two sides of the same coin. About six years ago I started doing a design masters in London whilst living in Glasgow. I went through a year of being basically a full time nomadic, never in the same place for more than three days at most, sleeping on overnight trains or on people’s floors etc. It was a nightmare but also a pretty defining point for my work, basically living out of a bag with very few garments in rotation; I think it was the first point where I realised that garments should work hard. My design as it stands is pretty much half about this kind of super functionality that was necessary during that time, and then the other half on this more fantastical, speculative side that tells a story.

What role does it play in your own wardrobe?

I live full time in Scotland now, and love to hike and camp, so it’s pretty crucial as it rains constantly. I’ve been wearing and repairing the same simple Rab GORE-TEX Pro shell for the last few years, alongside a few Supreme GTX pieces on rotation and I’ve been in a pair of Arc’teryx Bora boots with the removable GORE-TEX sock since about 2016.

How do you think GORE-TEX is seen culturally, as in beyond its pure technical qualities?

It’s like a casual tuxedo, like an elevation above the rest. Talismanic, like I said before. I think, especially in menswear, people are looking for the closest thing to the spider man outfit they wore as a kid, but paradoxically, without sticking out too much. For some people that was always a handmade tailored suit that looked like the same one as the person next to you, but you know yours is made by artisans on Savile Row. But increasingly it's a full Arc ensemble in GORE-TEX Pro … to the untrained eye it’s a similar silhouette to some shit from Sports Direct with a hood, cinch waist, Velcro cuffs, ‘waterproof’ fabric, but you know that if the sky was to open, you’d be the one making it out alive.

Working between streetwear and experimental sportswear brands, where would you say GORE-TEX sits within each?

At the centre of the streetwear world, you have a kid who knows the cultural history of GORE-TEX inside out, in the mix with other fashion, and interlinking with art and music. They grew up knowing Wu-Tang were wearing GORE-TEX versions of the Ralph Lauren snow beach pullover, and this is the world they see themselves as part of, a lineage. GORE-TEX is then a kind of gold standard, an emblem of being serious, clued in, and part of a long history. A brand such as Stone Island is a self-enclosed world of experimentation and design language that’s been added to over the years like some vast civil engineering project. If the base line is a GORE-TEX shell, the Stone Island answer to that question is always an experiment-based on treatment of a fabric and a particular design language and its evolution.

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