How a fashion campaign for a clothing brand is made, step by step

What a fashion campaign is and how it differs from a catalogue

A fashion campaign is the image a brand uses to present a collection or a season. Its job is not to show every garment in detail: the catalogue and the online shop do that. Its job is to make people understand what the collection is about and want to be part of it.

That is why the campaigns people remember, the ones on every list of iconic fashion campaigns, are rarely the ones that show the most clothes. They are the ones with a clear idea: a place, a character, an attitude. The clothes live inside that story.

A small brand can apply the same logic at its own scale. You don't need a supermodel or a trip to another continent. You need to know what you want people to feel when they see the photo, and to choose everything with that in mind: the light, the location, the casting and the pace of the video.

And today a campaign is no longer a single billboard photo. It is a set of pieces that come from the same idea: campaign portraits, an editorial, a lookbook, product photos for the website, a fashion film and vertical videos for social media. The better the idea is thought through, the easier it is for everything to fit together.

The steps to make a campaign for a clothing brand

This is how a fashion campaign comes together, from the first meeting to the launch.

First, the starting point. Which collection it is, who it's for, what makes it different and where it will be seen. A capsule pitched to a buyer is not the same as a collection launched on the online shop and on Instagram on the same day.

Second, the concept. One sentence that sums up the collection and a moodboard with references for light, colour, poses and places. This is where the tone is decided: clean and studio-based, or with a story and a location.

Third, pre-production. Model casting, styling, hair and make-up, location or studio, permits if you shoot on the street, and a shooting plan with every look and every shot. It is the stage that shows most in the result and the one most often cut short.

Fourth, the shoot. Photo and video on the same day, with the same crew and the same light, so that everything looks like the same campaign.

Fifth, post-production and launch: retouching, editing, colour grading, versions for every format and a publishing calendar planned before the shoot.

What a fashion shoot is and which types of photo you need

In fashion, a shoot is the photo session, and often the video session too, where the imagery for a collection is produced. In Spanish the English word "shooting" is used, but it simply means a session.

A campaign shoot usually produces four types of photo, and it pays to plan them together.

The campaign photo. A few images, carefully crafted, that sum up the idea. They go on the website's front page, to the press and into the ads.

The editorial. It tells a story more freely: it may not show the whole garment and leans into atmosphere, as in a magazine.

The lookbook. Each look from head to toe, in order, so buyers and customers can see the full collection. We explain it in what a fashion lookbook is and how it's made.

The product photo. The garment on its own, flat or on a model against a neutral background, for the online shop.

If each type is shot on a different day with a different crew, the brand ends up with four styles that don't match. If they all go into the same shooting plan, one well-organised day covers almost everything.

The video and the collection launch

Today a campaign without video falls short. The fashion film is the main piece: one or two minutes where the clothes move, with music and rhythm. From it come fifteen or thirty second cuts that work as ads, plus vertical videos for Reels and TikTok.

If you are looking for a simple way to make an ad for your clothing brand, that is the answer: you don't need a separate commercial. A good cut of the fashion film, with the garment in motion in the first seconds and the brand name at the end, already works as an ad.

To promote the collection, it is best to launch it in phases. A few days before, teasers: the fabric up close, behind the scenes of the shoot, a countdown. On launch day, the campaign photo and the fashion film everywhere at once: website, social media, newsletter and press. In the weeks that follow, the lookbook, the looks one by one and what people who already wear it post.

That way a single campaign gives you weeks of content. You'll find more ideas in what to post on a clothing brand's social media.

Real fashion campaigns and how we make them at Bostak

Three of our projects show how all this lands in practice.

For LARHHA at 080 Barcelona Fashion Week, with stylist Andrea Falcceto and the L23 collection, we made a fashion film, an editorial lookbook, product photography and social media content. The art direction was minimal, with neutral backgrounds and controlled light so that cut and fabric took centre stage. The brand used that material in its official communication for the runway.

For Jaray, by NouVelleMaison, the idea called for a different route. After a long concept phase we travelled to Granada to shoot, and the music for the fashion film was composed from scratch with Panorama Room Studio. The same production gave more than forty product photos, eight campaign portraits and the film.

And for Ainhoa Uruñuela's capsule for Stradivarius, the campaign first had to win over the brand itself: more than forty lookbook photos and social media content with a young, dynamic visual language.

At Bostak Films we run the whole campaign as a creative agency in Barcelona, from the idea to the launch, with our own studio in Viladecans. If you have a collection on the way, book a diagnostic call and we'll look at it together.

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