Vol. 25
Stop what you’re doing right now… new Cut Culture just dropped. This time we’re bringing you the shooting of an Original Superstar from a Wolfe in sheep’s clothing, a travel ad that’ll warm the cockles of your cold heart, and an intro to one of our current go-to photographers. And with the Rugby World Cup in full swing (…low, sweet chariot?), we’ll also give you a glimpse behind the scenes of our recent work for Canterbury, featuring everyone’s favourite Aussie Irishman currently tearing it up in France.
Cut Culture
If You Are What You Say You Are…
If you didn’t get it, the title is a Lupe Fiasco reference. And apropros of nothing, if you’ve been wondering what Lupe Fiasco has been up to for the last 15 years, he just randomly dropped one of the most impressive LLMs currently available, which we would thoroughly recommend you go try out HERE. But back to the matter at hand… Adidas have evidently been feeling all nice and self-congratulatory of late. But if you’re going to insist on blowing your own trumpet, then you better bloody be able to back it up. And they’ve done just that and then some, courtesy of a series of films devoted to the three-headed hydra that is the Superstar, Gazelle and Samba (three of the brand’s most iconic silhouettes). And each film is a thing of beauty. So the difficult decision here wasn’t whether to include the work in this month’s Cut Culture, but to decide which of the three to go for. The Samba was immediately disqualified purely on account of their already nauseating utter ubiquity at the minute. So it was between the Gazelle and the Superstar, but we opted for the latter, which is perhaps the unsung hero of the line-up. Directed by Daniel Wolfe, the film tells the full history of the shoe, from originally being designed for basketball to its subsequent adoption by hip-hop culture. And the RUN DMC cameo really is just the squirt of cream on top of the cherry on top of the icing on top of the cake. Scrumptious.
Emotional Baggage.
This’ll make feel like you should give your family a call. Almost brought a tear to my eye. Granted, that could also be from the lack of sleep, intermittent fasting, full moka pot of espresso and copious Nordic Spirit pouches. But the point remains, this latest ad from Rimowa uses the innate evolutionary power of familial bonds to create a hyper emotive film about luggage, traveling and missed calls that is guaranteed to pull on the heartstrings of even the most melancholic misanthrope. The partially Succession-fuelled rise of quiet luxury has been palpable over the last couple years, with Rimowa having been at the heart of it. Understated, refined, yet still aspirational. And this film embodies those values in a way that’s genuinely quite moving and not at all wanky. Using real voicemails from the cinematographer Gabriel Crawford Connelly’s family, the film highlights the idea that finding true meaning in travel is often conceptually dependent upon having a happy home to go to when the travelling is done. And this idea was all brought to life with an at times almost oxymoronic mixture of sharp image and filmic grain. A masterpiece. Even Logan Roy wouldn’t tell you to fuck off if he saw this.
BTS
Canterbury have a rich heritage; they are the original rugby brand, leading the charge since 1904. And despite having been around an awful lot longer than some of the newcomer Johnny-come-latelys, Canterbury always wanted to be at the forefront of moving the game forwards. So they came to us to launch the Speed Infinite Elite - their most innovative release in years - to tap into the next gen of digitally-minded, socially-native rugby fans.
For an innovative product, they needed an innovative campaign. But we started by going back to the basics of the boot itself, looking at the original design boards. What stood out to us was the inherent futurism in the product design, which had been heavily influenced by a sci-fi theme. This gave us the crux of an idea to riff off in a territory outside the parochial confines of the rugby sphere, but also one that’s getting more attention now in the current cultural climate than perhaps ever before (we’re not claiming we had any influence on the congressional hearing about aliens that happened a week after our launch film dropped, but the timing was suspect…).
What we came up with was a multi-layered campaign that played on all of the tropes of a clandestine alien invasion: redacted information, extra-terrestrial technology, dodgy CCTV footage, and an underlying sense that not everything is as it should be.
Check out the launch film below featuring Mack Hansen and Ellie Kildunne moving rather quickly (plus a little bit of exclusive BTS content).
Willow is a photographer and friend of the agency who specialises in portraiture and fashion (but who has also helped us out in the past with shooting some football fans scranning chips for Mitre - renaissance man, init). His client list includes the likes of Bella Freud, British Vogue, Cos, JW Anderson, Mulberry, Nike, Stella McCartney and many others - and for good reason. Willow is a master in evoking a sense of movement in his work and elevating portraiture to create a premium, very editorial feeling. And we’ve also just spent a week with him north of the border shooting a campaign for a Speyside single malt that we can’t tell you about yet but which you may see in a Cut Culture in the not-so-distant future. But in the meantime, you can go check out Willow’s website and Instagram for more of his work.