Celebrate Love: A Romantic Fashion Shoe Campaign
By January 2021, Veragano Shoes was done with 2020’s gloom. At Image Theory, we felt the same way. We needed a project that made people smile (and not through a mask). Something that made people want to go out and kick up their designer heels. If we needed another motivation for a positive vibe (we didn’t) the upcoming Valentine’s Day holiday would have provided one. And thus was Veragano’s “Celebrate Love” campaign born. Featuring the brand’s upbeat colors of turquoise and bright yellow and tying into Valentine’s romance with red balloons, champagne, candy, and flowers, the campaign would kick off the new year with small celebrations of love -- love of being alive, love of style, romantic love, and of course, love of beautiful shoes.
The campaign featured three phases that tested the studio’s capabilities. The first -- creation of a flagship image for the campaign (top left in the above grid) -- would feature our model at a small café table, posed against a solid yellow background to create a bright contrast with Veragano’s signature turquoise color -- the color featured in their elegant shoe boxes and soles. To these basic elements, we added red heart-shaped balloons and a red rose to key the “Celebrate Love” motif. Intended for direct email use, advertising, point-of-sale art, and possibly web page banners, it needed an large empty space to allow for text additions and multiple crops. Gradients, in this empty space, created a diffuse beam of light focused on the model, to keep things interesting.
For the second, and most ambitious, segment of this campaign, Veragano wanted to extend their branding beyond simple colors. Rima, the company’s founder and chief designer had seen previous abstract and impressionist backgrounds created by the studio’s art director and set designer, Sarah Kate Hirth. Rima commissioned Sarah Kate to create a permanent artwork that would be unique and instantly recognizable as Veragano and that would also serve as a background to a series of images in this and future shoots. This large (10x12’) surrealist painting would blend abstract color and shape elements with recognizable design elements in Veragano’s shoes. After extensive consultation, Sarah Kate got to work, and in over three intense days completed the complex and beautiful painting we called “Fantasia Veragano.” The result is a fantasy with a distinctly ancient culture, tropical vibe, featuring anamorphic and anthropomorphic shoes turning into birds and totemic faces. And in case you think this mystical rainforest vibe is gratuitous, Veragano’s founder is Malaysian, and naturalistic mysticism is ancient in Malaysian folk culture. The last picture in the set is Sarah Kate, posing in front of her painting.
For the shoot, we decided to create a hazy, extra-dimensional separation between the modern, celebratory foreground and the mystic surrealism of the painting. We draped iridescent tulle fabric in front of the painting and lit it at oblique angles from two directions. The shots for this segment are a minimalist representation of a happy shopping experience, some “new shoes” euphoria with the shopper’s treasure trove at home, and finally a surprise romantic encounter to round out the Celebrate Love motif.
The third phase used the yellow background, once again, for some simpler, product-oriented shots.
Well earned credits are as follows:
Model: Miranda Blackburn, Wilhelmina Miami Instagram @mira973
Set Design/Styling: Sarah Kate Hirth
HMUA: Aleya Duncan Instgram @frecklefacemakeup
Designer: Veragano Shoes Instagram @veragano