Inside Portal, a New Hybrid Brand Making Running, Hiking, and Cycling Gear

It is hard to stand out as an upstart fashion brand these days, when the only things that seem to get traction involve celebrity cosigns, luxury brand collaborations, or event-specific sales. So it’s all the more impressive that Portal, a new apparel label founded by a collective of functional sportswear experts, has emerged with a simple clothing system centered around running, cycling, and hiking. It helps that the clothes are stealth and stylish, too.

The Portal founding team is made up of Patrick Stangbye, John Roberts, Colin Meredith, and Barrie Bloor. Field Mag readers may already be acquainted with Stangbye, formerly the Creative Director at ROA primarily responsible for spearheading the brand’s foray into apparel. Meredith, an exceptionally talented designer in his own right, is likely also a familiar name thanks to his eponymous label ‘Colin Meredith’ and its recently collaborations with ROA and Ciele. Roberts and Bloor may be lesser known names, but are certainly equal contributors. Roberts formerly worked in product development at Rapha while Bloor has worked with various labels on graphic design, art direction, and brand identity. A powerhouse creative team to put it lightly.

After being brought together on Rapha’s ‘ROADWEAR’ lifestyle collection a couple of years ago, the group recognized an opportunity to create more clothes centered around the mutli-sport lives they all lived. Thus, Portal was born.

Portal officially launched during Paris Fashion Week in summer 2024, offering a range of gear designed with movement in mind, including cycling bibs, soft-shell trousers, wind-resistant shell jackets, and split-seam shorts. The ongoing collection addresses the practical needs of people who want to run, bike, hike, backpack, and climb, both as a means of transportation and as an escape. Though products are made from light, breathable fabrics and designed to function outdoors while the wearer is in motion, Portal’s clothes mostly look like chic spins of standard items that wouldn’t feel out of place in the city, too.

Portal’s logo, as seen clearly on running shorts, lightweight tees, and cargo belts, could easily be mistaken for a leaf, tying into the brand’s holistic approach. However, when I visited its Paris showroom this past January, I was told it actually is meant to mirror a Strava heat map, mapping the routes taken by people escaping from a city to its surrounding trails. While there are brands out there whose identity and iconography are cool from an aesthetic standpoint, Portal’s is wholly cohesive, ensuring each element coexists seamlessly.

To fully immerse ourselves in the world of Portal, I reached out to the team to learn more and understand the fundamentals that shape Portal’s approach to design, its origins, and the problems it solves. The answers to my questions below, which were collaboratively written with feedback from all four members of the collective, have been further edited and condensed for clarity.

Q&A With Portal Founders

What brought the four of you together?

We had known each other, either as friends or professionally, for some time before we decided to start Portal. We’ve all worked in and around the industry for a long time.

The first realization that we worked well together as a team was during a consultancy project that we all collaborated on for Rapha. We spent time running and riding together during the project, and found we had similar ideas. The project ended, and we decided to start building something together.

We set out to create something that reflected our lifestyle, and we felt that no one else was providing us with the product we really wanted or needed. This was the real catalyst that brought us together.

We see ourselves and our community as modern explorers moving through landscapes. Multimodality is important to us, and we engage in various activities throughout the year, covering distance by foot, bike, or other means, such as skis or a kayak. Being outdoors and moving is close to our heart and identity, and we want to provide a brand that serves as a catalyst, facilitating and inspiring movement.

What is the design goal for Portal products?

The design ethos at Portal is rooted in solving real-world problems in the performance space, innovating where possible, and curating the output to the point where it seamlessly integrates into someone’s wardrobe and daily life. While some things we build are activity-specific, like our Realm Cargo Shorts (cycling bib shorts with a chamois), many other styles aim to bridge the functions between activities and daily life.

Everything has to have a genuine reason to exist, and each product begins from a different place. Sometimes, it's a new material that creates an opportunity for a product or feature to be improved, and other times, it’s a combination of function and fit that we feel could be explored further.

We have spoken before about each product having a clear role to play in our lifestyles and wardrobes, and that is how our range will be built and continually upgraded. We identify the products that we need and no more, then we ensure they are the best products they can be.

During the design process, did you encounter any unexpected challenges, and how did you mitigate these?

With a new project, there are numerous opportunities, but also challenges related to selecting materials, determining how things will fit together, and then determining the design language and how to present it. As mentioned before, despite the collective experiences, there were not many unexpected challenges; however, for almost every product iteration, adaptations were made to arrive at its current state.

Wear testing is integral to delivering what the product aims to do functionally and how it is supposed to feel. Even with great processes, knowledge, experience, and intuition, things don’t always immediately turn out as you expect them to after iterating and testing.

We’ve seen many brands attempt to strike a balance between performance and lifestyle, but what sets Portal apart from other labels seeking a similar approach to design?

We don’t see ourselves looking to capture a part of the market or fill a gap. Instead, we have always been looking for products that facilitate the lifestyle that we live and felt that no one was providing exactly what we wanted and needed. We knew what we wanted and how to build it, so we decided to just make it ourselves!

VISIT PORTAL TO LEARN MORE