A spring campaign for Neiman Marcus, shot in one day and run across social, email, the stores, and editorial. ’80s mall glam meets high fashion.
Double-exposure composite
Pink blazer over mesh field
One of the four photographs
Scroll. It fills the mat, then travels the frame
Neiman Marcus wanted a spring campaign for Robert Rodriguez that felt current and still kept the brand's romantic side, and the budget covered one day in the studio.
One model, four setups, and the photographs layered over each other so the same few pictures could carry a whole look.
The Reference.
Mall portrait studios. Glamour Shots. The oversaturated close-up with a soft-focus background and a fan going somewhere off camera. The look of a whole decade of mall glam.
The brief was to take that energy seriously, the confidence, the color, the full unironic glamour, and rebuild it with contemporary craft.
The Technique.
Double exposures. Two frames from the same shoot layered together, one tight, one wide, and the overlap makes a third picture that neither frame has on its own. A close-up bleeds into a full-length, a gesture turns into a texture.
Mesh color fields replaced the airbrushed backdrops, smooth washes shifting from coral to orange to pink, with the warmth of the reference and none of the noise.
The System.
Four photographs, a typeface family, and a color field. Every piece in the campaign is some mix of those three, and each combination looks a little different from the last.
Every piece was layered from the same four pictures.
Social got tight crops, email got the headers, the stores got the color fields at full strength, and the editorial spreads gave the double exposures room to run wide.
The storefront window ran the composites at large format. The color fields were drawn as gradients, so they scale to any size. A three-foot print is as smooth as a phone screen.
The mall studio, rebuilt for the runway
The type was chosen for this campaign specifically. Archer Book for body copy, warm rounded serifs that match the softness of the photography.
The palette is coral, orange, and pink. As flat blocks they clash; with smooth transitions between them they work.
rodriguez
Logo on mesh field
Hairline caps over Book lowercase
Depth through overlap
The whole campaign is four photographs from one day, layered over each other and set on gradients.
Photo Compositing
Typography Design
Campaign Design
Adobe Illustrator
Capture One