Spotlighting the sustainability dilemma with recycled denim art
At Milan’s prestigious Design Week in April, we helped launch MORE OR LESS, a provocative exhibition by denim brand G-Star RAW and legendary Dutch designer and artist Maarten Baas highlighting a relevant dilemma for the fashion and design industry: sustainability.
More specifically, the tension and duality between our desire for more… and the need for less.
Featuring denim waste material refashioned by Baas into playful, striking and thought-provoking art and design pieces - including a 15-metre private jet - MORE OR LESS aimed to demonstrate the upcycling possibilities of denim, as well as prompting discussion around the duality of sustainability.
We introduced the collaboration and exhibits with a PR strategy that focused on this ‘uncomfortable reality’. We worked closely on finding the right messaging around this sensitive topic - then inviting journalists to attend the event, and leading the international PR push focusing on US and UK media.
Our challenge was to position G-Star RAW as an authentic voice. Nobody’s hands are clean after all - especially not as a denim retailer. We wanted to help G-Star find the balance between talking honestly about sustainability and not falling into common traps like saying nothing of interest - or even worse, greenwashing.
Watch the video here
We pushed to articulate the apparent dichotomy between wanting to do the right thing while acknowledging that the journey to becoming a sustainable organisation is not a quick (or easy) one - being both a successful business and a responsible fashion brand is an ongoing challenge.
We did this by presenting the exhibition as a way of generating debate around the sustainability dilemma rather than providing the ultimate solution - as well as being a physical, creative demonstration of G-Star RAW’s commitment to recycling and a realisation of creative agency, The Family’s vision of pushing the artistic boundaries of what can be done with denim.
Result
We generated a huge media impact with a launch campaign and PR strategy ahead of and during Milan Design Week - with coverage continuing after the event.
To date, we secured 34 pieces of coverage in A-list news, fashion and design publications and platforms as well as creative industry journals, reaching an audience of 4.7 billion globally. We ‘broke’ the story with a prominent feature in Forbes followed by several feature articles and interviews in publications such as Wallpaper*, Dezeen and Hypebeast, as well as overwhelmingly positive review articles in DesignBoom, DesignTaxi and the ever-elusive Editor’s Pick in Ad Age.
We even saw journalists posting about the project on their own personal platforms too.
