Exploring the Beauty of Nature with Hessnatur.
What if nature was the future of cities?
Almost nothing in human history is as old as the divide between cities and the countryside. Today, more people than ever have embraced the energy, opportunity, and the diversity of city living. And yet, increasingly, people are no longer willing to accept the pollution and lack of beauty that comes with being removed from nature.
Which raises the question: what would a future look like in which we no longer had to choose between these things?
This year, fair fashion pioneer hessnatur celebrated its 45th anniversary. The last thing we wanted the company to do, however, was follow the clichéd conventions of sustainable fashion communication and present its fall/winter collection in stereotypical, bucolic rural isolation. Instead, our proposal was to create a campaign that would highlight the natural ease with which hessnatur fits into a distinctively urban environment. The goal was not to look back on hessnatur’s past, but to shine a light towards the brand’s bright future.
The working hypothesis of our campaign was as bold as it was simple: show how hessnatur is not simply sustainable clothing, but how every garment is, in itself, an embodiment of a better future for life in the urban environment.
Just as our cities become more liveable and beautiful as we transform manmade structures into natural habitats, wearing hessnatur clothing – all of which is made from the highest grade, organic, purely natural materials – allows people to be touched by the beauty and healing experience of nature.
What if living in the city no longer meant being removed from nature, but being surrounded by it instead?
To translate this concept into imagery, we cooperated with renowned fashion photographer Tereza Mundilová and Studio CNP to explore the changing relationship between nature and the modern cityscape. The campaign was shot over two days in Milan, a city that is known as a global fashion capital but also a center of finance and heavy industry. Long plagued by environmental problems, Milan in recent years has embarked on an ambitious journey of ecological restoration.
Can we make our lives more resilient by opening our cities to the forces of life?
In the resulting campaign, shot by fast-rising talent Tereza Mundilová, the images ask the audience to reimagine the city not as the antithesis of nature, but as a beautiful space of coexistence between the manmade and the wild. In doing so, the campaign not only speaks to the core values of hessnatur, but also presents a powerful vision of a future in which humans everywhere feel touched by nature in a rich and symbiosis that is as old as time itself.