James Franco was hired to shoot the Campaign for Spring 2013, he chose to engage the public via various social media outlets to choose what would happen to the protagonist of the film. Cleverly called "A Beautiful Odyssey" the film was shot using a Vintage 8mm camera and edited to dictate what our customer wanted the ending to be.
The real challenge was to work closely with the pattern makers in Gerber to maximize the yeild on the yardage of printed fabric. To allow for quick delivery these prints are produced in finished rolls of fabric mostly produced in Italy, Japan or Turkey. Again the challenge was to think outside the norms of textile print making and create a repeat that would work for the entire size run of the consumer (25-32) using one stactic piece of artwork.
Another challenge that was brought to my attention was the deisre to duplicate the "look' of a 1960s vintage piece completely hand-beaded, and obviously damaged rhinestone-pattern bought at French Vintage store.
The in-house senior graphic designer shot a manequin in a conventional linesheet shoot environment, needless to say, the resolution of the overall image was insuficient to my application but that did not stope me.
I decided to take matters into my own hands, borrow a Canon from a colleague with a Macro lens, while articulating the lighting to give me the closest and more drastic version of what the rhinestones embroidered into this vintage dress would actually look like. This is what I got:
The end product reflects years of trial and errors, staring with rotary print, sublimation, 4 color print,etc... to evolve and reflect an image duplication that is seemless, photographic image, that doesn't comprimise the handfeel or content of its state of the art denim fabric. The "lace illusion" print as it has become known as, recently proved to be the number one seller in the company's past three and half years.
