Selected Work / Ánima
Ánima
Art direction for a fashion label's seasonal campaign — the look, the casting, the light, the shot list and the grade.
Ánima, a fashion label · Art direction · 2026
Role
Art Direction
Scope
Direction, casting, styling, set, grade
Outcome
A whole season from one wall and one afternoon
Overview
Ánima is a fashion label, and this is the art direction for its seasonal campaign. I set the look, cast it, styled it, planned the light and the shot list, and built the grade — eighteen frames shot against one plaster wall in a single afternoon.
The challenge
The label had been shooting the way everyone shoots: white cyc, soft light, clean retouching — and the work looked like everyone else's. The clothes were beautiful and the pictures were invisible. The brief I set: make the photography as distinctive as the tailoring, without a bigger budget.
My strategic thinking
I moved the whole season outdoors, onto a single plaster wall, and let the sun art-direct it. Hard afternoon light turns a coat's silhouette into a graphic and throws a shadow that becomes the second subject. Strip out everything that competes — locations, props, retouching — and the only things left are the cut of the garment and the shadow it casts.
Process
Three rules first: shoot at 3pm or don't shoot; no retouching; one wall for every look. Then casting for stillness, styling down to a single brass ring, a light plan built around a 42-degree sun with a scrim used only to soften — never to kill — and a five-setup shot list where every frame has a job.
The design system
A palette pulled from the clothes rather than chosen for them — oxblood, sand, clay, bone, ink. A casting brief of faces that hold stillness: the clothes move, the person doesn't. And one LUT for the entire season: warm the mids, hold the highlights, stop the shadow going blue, and never push the oxblood — if the red needs saturating, the light was wrong on the day.
The final solution
Eighteen frames from one afternoon, running across print, out-of-home and digital — a hero, a full-length walk, a fabric detail, a pair against the wall, and a black-and-white portrait. Same wall, same sun, five setups. The season reads as one photograph taken many times.
Results
A campaign that finally looks like the clothes: restrained, tactile, and unmistakably this label. Because the whole season grades in a single pass, the imagery can't drift as it rolls out across channels — and the next season starts from a look, not a blank page.
Lessons learned
Art direction is mostly saying no. The picture gets stronger with every element you remove — the second light, the location, the retouch, the smile. Find the one idea that carries the frame, then defend it against everything that wants to soften it.
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