GR10K 'Incognito' Fall 2024 Ad Campaign

Review of GR10K ‘Incognito’ Fall 2024 Ad Campaign by Art Director Luigi Alberto Cippini and Photographer Salvatore Caputo

GR10K launches its first campaign, an ironic investigation of surveillance, privacy, and the public language of branding.

Bucking conventional expectations of fashion campaign production, the imagery forms a striking and strange extension of the brand’s concern with how technology shapes life. Several of the images are grainy and taken from a high angle, as if they are stills from CCTV footage, suggesting themes of mass surveillance. But the protagonist refuses to be recognized and categorized, and they wear a taped together face mask that is somewhere between spa treatment and slasher film. These images are finished off with black and red borders with Brat-esque pixelated text that reads “Sponsored Content,” “Product Placement,” or “Brand Awareness.”

In other enigmatic shots, we see a closeup of a face whose eye has a red iris or gloved hands removing photos from an envelope after having the film developed.

The campaign is instantly striking first of all simply because of how different it looks from the fashion campaigns we tend to see, intentionally distancing itself and subverting the techniques of image making and consumerism. More than just an exercise in idiosyncrasy, however, there are deep themes of perception and identity at play here. How can we be ourselves when our own image doesn’t belong to us? How can we make our own choices when our awareness and desire are influenced by the branded images our sight is constantly being flooded with?

These are daring questions for a fashion brand to ask. If GR10K is forging such a distinctive visual and bold conceptual path for itself with its first campaign, we can’t wait to see how it develops.