Stylish Leather Landscapes Blur Lines Between Nature and Fashion

​Evolved By Nature is a life sciences company on a mission to create more sustainable ingredients for skincare, beauty and fashion. As part of this, they created a biodegradable, carbon-reductive alternative to traditional leather coatings, which are often synthetic.

To promote its ‘Activated Silk L1’ bio-finishing system, the brand’s in-house Creative Lab team, led by creative directors Wade Devers and Viktor Angwald, created a vibrant print campaign that sends a clear message about bringing leather back to nature.

Working with their staff photographer and production studio, the images capture a range of the biotech company’s premium leather articles as ‘Leather Landscapes’, using angles, light and the material’s natural texture and colour to evoke scenes from around the world.

“Our photographer had been experimenting in the studio,” explain Wade and Viktor. “Some of the resulting experimental images resembled natural landscapes, which sparked the idea: could we intentionally shape these to reflect specific attributes of our biofinished leather, like water resistance, carbon reduction, and peak performance?”

The goal was set: create images that make viewers ask: ‘Is it leather? Or is it nature?’.

Each image began with a real photograph of the leather, before being digitally enhanced to further blur the line between the material and natural world, pushing viewers to engage more deeply. “One of the creative challenges was working with a small (but mighty!) in-house team and limited resources,” the creatives say, “while still achieving high-production-value work with a level of visual sophistication on par with luxury fashion advertising.”

This was especially important, as the campaign was targeted at high-fashion brands looking for lower-carbon usage leather. To reach them, the prints were placed in leading industry publications like World Leather Magazine and Footwear News, as well as OOH placements in one of the world’s largest tannery districts, Arzignano, Italy.

Wade and Viktor say that high-end fashion names often source from this “leather Mecca”, where they hoped to capture the attention of local tanneries, encouraging recommendations to brands.

“Ultimately, the raw material buyers for these brands are part of an industry that’s driven by art and beauty. Yet trade magazines, like where this campaign appeared, are filled with dense editorial articles and a plethora of technical product shots. We saw an opportunity to break that mould with high-concept visuals. Our audience values craft and artistry, and we wanted our campaign to reflect that.”

The brand is no stranger to disruptive marketing, but this is the first time they’ve executed on a global scale. As such, they wanted to go beyond simply ‘making a statement about a product’, instead communicating a vision for the future of the leather industry – “one that switches to a biofinish that is more sustainable, biodegradable, not made with PFAS, and continuously reduces industries’ reliance on plastics, such as polyurethane, and fossil fuels.”

Already, the campaign has contributed to a "significant" increase in demand for the brand, they say, receiving orders to finish millions of square feet of leather using the Activated Silk L1 system.

Looking ahead, the team is staying focused on driving impact in the fight against forever chemicals and fossil fuels in fashion and beauty. “There’s so much great work in our creative pipeline, not just for leather but also for Evolved By Nature’s broader portfolio of naturally derived ingredients in the skincare and beauty industries,” the creative directors add. “We hope you’ll stay tuned for what’s coming next, especially around New York Fashion Week.”