Your Jeans Should Age With You, Says G-Star's Striking New Ad

Alongside agency The Family Amsterdam, G-Star has released its latest ad: "Wear Your Denim Till the End."

The film opens with a man moving slowly through space, but also time: As he navigates a series of columns, he ages. As the weather and environment around him change, so do his jeans.

"They say that life is like a really good pair of jeans," the narrator says, followed by a self-deprecating snicker. "They don't actually say that." The voice is cracked and leathery, audibly modeling the action: How "scars and scuffs become souvenirs" or "wrinkles and lines form in good times … and bad."

He could be talking as much about us as about jeans, and that's the point. Good jeans get better with time. We do, too.

"Wear Your Denim Till the End" promotes G-Star's RAW Responsibility strategy, composed of eight initiatives meant to extend the life of clothes via repair, reuse or recycling, while being more transparent about production. Items in G-Star's web shop will reflect a Responsible Materials Ranking that includes garment composition and fibers ranked by environmental impact. The raw denim collection is accompanied by a lifetime warranty. 

The company has committed to transitioning to exclusively organic, recycled, bio-based and compostable materials by 2030. It also hired a new head of sustainability, Rebecka Sancho.

Thanks to a different campaign, Wunderman Thompson's "Cleopatra's Jeans" for tech firm TG3D, we recently learned that 85 percent of textiles are thrown out. Jeans—probably the most democratic of clothes—are a big part of that. 

"Waste is among the biggest issues in the fashion industry," says Joris Kuijpers, executive creative director at The Family. "What's special about denim is that it can last a lifetime, if you take care of it and embrace its different stages of life. Which is exactly what Paul Geusebroek has expressed in this film. Once again, he has directed a spot that transcends mere marketing, telling a very human story with elegance and panache."

Like "Cleopatra's Jeans," this campaign tackles the problem of fast fashion (which is as much an attitude as an industry) from sideways. By changing our perspective on aging, making the evidence of it feel well-earned and enviable, G-Star also allocates space for us to modify our feelings about the lifecycle of jeans: You don't have to buy them sexily pre-distressed for $500, or even $5, for that matter. Get a good pair and time will do the work for you, just as it does the work on you. What's more, those jeans can make for a companion through those different stages of life.

"All it takes is a little bit of patience," the narrator says. "So welcome every stage of life: Real denim, till the end."

"Wear Your Denim 'Till the End" will appear on TV, as well as on social media and alongside digital marketing. Deepfake technology was used to age the man as he walks from spring into winter. Revel.ai provided proprietary software, coupled with an A.I. algorithm, to create a digital twin of the main character. The digital model was then adapted with shots of different actors at different ages, plus VFX, and a team from Ambassadors smoothed the aging process to make it look as subtle and natural as possible.

Sizzer selected the music. The director, Paul Geusebroek of Halal, previously worked with The Family to make "Rhythm of Denim," G-Star's smooth and intense call-and-response ad, featuring two tap dancers, from earlier this year. 

"Raw denim is at the core of our brand DNA," says Gwenda van Vliet, G-Star's CMO. "At G-Star, we embrace the aging process of denim and we are proud of how we have been able to capture the beauty of this journey in the latest global brand campaign. I really see this as a call out to value your denim and wear it longer."

CREDITS

Client: G-Star RAW
Agency: The Family Amsterdam

Production company: HALAL Amsterdam
Director: Paul Geusebroek 
DOP: Albert Salas 
Executive Producer: Job Sanders
Senior Producer: Natalie Wetherell
Service Production company: Solent

VFX: Ambassadors
Deep Fake: Revel.Ai
Grading: Crabsalad
Offline edit: Brian Ent 
Music company: Sizzer
Audiomix: Sauvage Sound