🎄 SKIMS Holiday Campaign Creative Direction

... and vintage magazine aesthetics.

What’s good everyone happy Monday. Hope you all had a wonderful weekend. I spent my Sunday getting my life together and I watched the new David Fincher movie. I am a big fan of his (Rosamund Pike in Gone Girl is a huge cinematic crush for me) and this new movie is horrible except for the fact the main character only listens to The Smiths (he just like me for real). This morning I am blasting ‘How Soon is Now’

Okay let’s tackle the biggest creative direction news from the weekend… the holidays Skims campaign.

Vintage Magazine Aesthetic

The new holiday campaign for Skims is receiving much deserved praise online, with many people on twitter dot com clamoring to see the moodboards. Well… here you go: the campaign takes major inspiration from vintage ‘Lui’ magazines, an iconic French mag that began in the 70s. I would love to see more brands look back on vintage magazine covers for inspiration. One great place to source inspo is:

https://coverjunkie.com/

Lui

The campaign was shot by Nadia Lee Cohen, a photographer having a major hot streak. She worked with Kim on last year’s Interview magazine cover and recent shoots. She also did Lana Del Rey’s Interview Magazine cover. (Two cover shoots in under 12 months…. impressive!)

Throw Out the Playbook

This new Skims campaign and many of the recent ones that have preceded it have taken a substantially more creative approach than campaigns from previous years. Skims is leaning into the absurd, creating fun, out of the box collateral. This is a huge lesson for brands that throwing out the tried and true playbook and taking a risk is critical for generating buzz. Forget the brand aesthetic and add a new dimension to your brand story. This new campaign does that very well and shows the elasticity big brands can have when working with up and coming creatives like Cohen.

What is interesting is how the brand is doing this while also juggling their foray into new avenues, like their mens line and recent NBA partnership.

Skims seems to be unstoppable right now from both a business and creative direction standpoint… now worth $4B.

About Jake

Jake Bell is a content marketing strategist based in NYC. He specializes in branding, art direction, creative strategy, content creation, and making things cool.

To get in touch visit www.jb.studio

Like video? Check out his TikTok

Like fit pics and pictures of chairs? Visit his Instagram.