Stockholm Surfboard Club Fall 2025 Ad Campaign

Review of Stockholm Surfboard Club Fall 2025 Ad Campaign by Art Director Karl Bolander with Photographer Alex Knost

Some fashion campaigns whisper; others shout. Stockholm Surfboard Club’s Fall 2025 offering doesn’t do either—it slouches into frame with a sideways grin and sand still in its shoes. Photographed by the ever-enigmatic Alex Knost, a long-time collaborator and something of a West Coast renaissance man, the campaign presents itself not as an advertisement, but as an incidental discovery—a sun-faded page torn from a fanzine, fluttering across a California sidewalk. It’s a campaign that seems to say, “We didn’t try too hard,” with just enough polish to know they did.

Set against the washed-out suburban sprawl of Orange County—Knost’s own backyard—the campaign drifts between the staged and the stumbled-upon. Life-size cut-out figures, dressed in Stockholm Surfboard Club’s Fall collection, are placed with charming awkwardness in parking lots, beside shrubs, and among the scorched pavement of sun-beaten driveways. These flat avatars, with their stiff limbs and weathered gazes, possess an uncanny presence: they’re lifeless, yes, but they feel oddly lived-in. They echo the texture of the clothes themselves—gritty, sun-bleached, and palpably real. The images evoke a documentary feel, one that winks knowingly at skate zines of decades past. There’s a distinct sense that we’ve stumbled into a moment not meant for us, and that’s precisely what makes it irresistible.

What’s most compelling here is the quiet cleverness. The cut-out figures, like ghosts of a subculture, nod to both the flattening of identity in the digital age and the permanence of physical community—especially within the surf and skate scenes. The tactile nature of the campaign—analog photography, xeroxed aesthetic, and zine distribution—grounds the collection in something refreshingly anti-hype. It’s not glossy or aspirational in the traditional fashion sense. Instead, it invites you into a scene. You’re not buying a look; you’re buying a feeling, a scratchy snapshot of a life lived sideways.

Manne Glad, Stockholm Surfboard Club’s Creative Director, and art director Karl Bolander deserve credit for orchestrating a visual language that avoids the usual trappings of seasonal fashion campaigns. By letting Knost’s raw visual logic lead—be it his lens, his layouts, or his uncanny cardboard avatars—they’ve opened space for a narrative that feels as improvised as it is intentional. The decision to anchor the campaign in Knost’s own neighborhood and visual voice adds a deeply personal touch, one that reinforces the label’s ethos: thoughtful rebellion with Scandinavian cool.

There are, of course, edges worth smoothing. The concept, as original as it is, walks a fine line—some viewers may feel the cut-outs verge on gimmick if not emotionally grounded. And while the analog charm sings, there’s a risk that the grit might obscure the garments themselves. One wonders if a slightly closer conversation between product and art might have given the collection more room to breathe. Still, that’s a minor quibble in a campaign so delightfully offbeat.

The accompanying zine—a printed collaboration built around Knost’s photography—cements the campaign’s authenticity. It’s a love letter to a cultural moment, not a sales pitch. And that’s precisely what makes it work.

In a world where most campaigns are content to be pretty, Stockholm Surfboard Club has dared to be peculiar. The result? A campaign that sticks—not because it shouts, but because it lingers, like the scent of ocean salt and hot asphalt.