09th July 2012

DIESEL’S BRIGHT & FRESH

Lollipops, tongues, unicorns and semi-naked men: fashion meets eccentric art installations for Diesel’s latest “Fresh & Bright” campaign.

Images: Behind the scenes of “The Art of Color”/Ben&Julia Studio.

Fashion brand Diesel have found a novel way of getting users to explore the different colours of men’s underwear available in their “Fresh & Bright” collection.

The “Art of Color” – dubbed as an exhibition – which you can find over on their site is by Amsterdam-based agency SuperHeroes. It mixes fashion and digital art installations to ‘apply’ colour to Diesel underwear, via some rather strange methods involving lollipops with tongues and lasers emitting from the eyes of a unicorn.

More than colour palettes are enticed as users are invited to spray the colour of their choice onto underwear modelled by an inevitably semi-naked man. Another option even ‘licks’ the colour onto the boxers.

SuperHeroes went to Ben&Julia Studio, Berlin (known for their playful, colourful and surreal work) for the art installations to be created and recorded. Benoit Créac’h & Julia Gaudard handled the project from production, art direction, and direction to create a modern entity through the three aesthetic and quirky films which they say were a clin d’œil or nod to the contemporary art video scene and Dada symbolism.

Everything on the shoot was shot as a separate plate and then brought together with compositing, motion graphics and editing by Fred Huergo. The lush colours and quirky design aptly follows Diesel’s offbeat print campaign for their Spring/Summer 2012 range from earlier this year, which advertised under the banner “Portraits for Successful Living” and featured oversized props such as huge robots, eggs, hammers and a cactus.

The campaign starred models including Dimitri Tanner, Ashley Smith, Alison Nix, Patrick Kafka, Liu Wen, Maria Palm and Simon Nessman in images that were shot by renowned fashion photographers and music video directors Mert and Marcus (Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott).

In 2008, Diesel changed its tone of voice under Swedish agency Farfar and left the “For Successful Living” tag, also switching their red logo to black. However, in 2010, under New York agency Anomaly, Diesel reverted back to Italian clothing brand’s former tone as well as the red logo with the “Be Stupid” campaign, which you may remember from the pages of Lürzer’s Archive Vol. 2/2010.