CAMPAIGN DIRECTION · 2023
The Unseen Collection
A fashion campaign shot entirely on medium format film, for a label that refuses to advertise digitally.
Client: Maison Leroux · Scope: Creative Direction, Photography, Styling
Maison Leroux, Paris. Shot on Mamiya RZ67, Ilford HP5. No digital captures were made during production.
The Brief
Maison Leroux doesn't advertise. Not as a budget decision — as a philosophical one. Their clothes are made in runs of under 200 pieces, sold through a single Paris stockist and a deliberately difficult-to-navigate website.
The brief for The Unseen Collection was to create a campaign that could live outside of digital advertising entirely: something that felt like it was discovered rather than served.
Four cities. Eleven looks. One rule: nothing retouched.
Production kit for the entire campaign. One camera. Twelve rolls of film. No assistants.
The Approach
Shooting on medium format film wasn't an aesthetic choice so much as a structural one — the format's inherent limitations forced a discipline on set that digital campaigns rarely have. Twelve frames per roll. No instant review. No retouching without it showing. Every frame had to count.
Locations were chosen for what they resisted, not what they offered: empty side streets at 6am, the back rooms of restaurants before service, a car park in Marseille on a Tuesday afternoon. The models weren't directed so much as placed and observed. The clothes did the rest.
The Result
The campaign ran in physical form only — a 48-page newsprint booklet distributed through the stockist and three independent bookshops, with no digital distribution. It sold out in eleven days. Three months later, scanned copies were circulating online without any promotion from the brand, reaching an audience Maison Leroux had never formally targeted.
The Unseen Collection was, by design, impossible to ignore.
The Unseen Collection newsprint booklet. Printed in a single run of 300. None remain.
4
Cities
11
Looks
11
Days to Sell Out
o
Digital Ads
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