The creative direction of this campaign marked the conclusion of our collaboration with Itoh in shaping the visual language and brand identity of the brand, still in its nascent stage in 2018. With this campaign, we thought to reconsider the tropes of masculinity that used to, and still continue to, dominate the menswear landscape in India, and craft a narrative which portrays the ethos of Itoh as a brand that embraces vulnerability, softness, and authenticity.

This campaign featured Areez Katki, a textile artist based between India and New Zealand, in situ at his grandparents’ house in Mumbai. Dropping all pretence and gimmicks, we tried to go beyond the conventional approach to fashion photography, both in terms of the subject and the space, thereby focusing on the personality of the Itoh man—bringing in glimpses of his context and his background into the imagery, but also letting the garments communicate these inherent qualities. The images thus became a microcosm shaped collectively by the featured artist, the photographer, and the world we built for the Itoh brand. Place-making was a central tenet in our work for Itoh, a label that embraces its origins in New Delhi. Bringing in a sense of this environment into the backdrop of the photos continued to be something Itoh explored in their future campaigns.

This campaign was photographed by Ashish Shah.