The Fashion Still Life Is Having a Renaissance

The rise of object storytelling in fashion imagery

Jun 29, 2025

Hi everyone,

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Today’s Post

Today’s post is about fashion still life’s. While this is not anything new, I feel like more brands are turning to this in more conceptual and visually interesting ways. Perhaps it’s the rising costs of travel and model, maybe it’s the fast pace content that makes them think of ways to produce more without needing so many people, but fashion still life’s are in my opinion sometimes more exciting to look at than campaigns. Let’s jump right into it.

The fashion still life is no longer a visual footnote. Once relegated to filler content or product detail shots to stimulate purchase, it has re-emerged as a strategic tool, as a medium capable of evoking memory, emotion, and meaning. Unlike the high-gloss campaigns built on celebrity presence or narrative arc, these images offer something more distilled. An arrangement of postcards, a fingerprint on glass, the curl of a ribbon: these are the new protagonists of visual storytelling.

There’s a bit of a defiance to this shift. Amid the rapid cycles of trend-driven imagery, the still life asserts slowness. It asks to be observed, not consumed. A Valentino luxury bag on a plastic wrapped patterned mattress with carefully placed roses on the side, orange textures mini bags on a black tray on a table and flower bag charms in a straw basket with a perfect white napkin in there. These are all functional placements to emphasise the design and cue a feeling before function. Each object becomes a site of suggestion, where it is hinting at context, place, and texture without giving too much away.

image 1: Jacquemus 2025, image 2: Valentino 2025

The Object as Evidence

A still life originates as an art form, a painting, but has evolved to more than a visual pleasure. It’s about anchoring a brand’s world through matter. What object you choose, how it’s lit, what it rests on, all these decisions become a kind of code. The visual logic behind still life campaigns today is no longer purely about showcasing product.

Still Life with Flowers, Goblet, Dried Fruit, and Pretzels by Clara Peeters

This is where some brands are doing some of the most interesting work.

Take the Adidas x Hender Scheme collaboration, for instance. Rather than isolating the shoes as product, the campaign framed them against bare skin, limbs intertwined in a soft sculptural pose. The sneaker became almost a second skin, a material extension of the body. There was no styled outfit, no traditional prop, just the shoe in contact with human form. The effect felt deeply tactile, a suggestion of intimacy and lived experience, showing how a product inhabits a person’s world rather than just appearing in it.

A New Kind of Visual Poetry

In the Valentino images under Alessandro Michele’s direction, cherry-printed canvas sandals and woven espadrilles are staged with a kind of playful theatre. Set against plush carpets and decorative antique trims, the objects feel both celebratory and slightly dissonant, the cherries, velvet, kitsch baroque, all colliding in a charged frame.

These shots feel lived-in, culturally referential, drawing you into a story and Michele’s world. There is a kind of emotional residue in these images: a sense of leftover party, a hint of nostalgia, a memory of the 70s. That’s what makes still life so powerful right now. Rather than offering answers, it suspends you in an atmosphere. It trusts you to connect the dots, to place these shoes in your own memory or fantasy.

Still Life as Cultural Commentary

If the image functions as a mirror of the moment, then the return of the object points to a deeper cultural shift. We’re living in an age of material nostalgia. Physicality has meaning again. We want to see texture. To trace the outline of a thumbprint. To feel the weight of something.

That longing manifests in the renewed attention to craft and tactility. But this is not shown in a literal way with images of artisan hands, instead it’s felt through the conceptualisation of the image. Like a wax-melt residue next to a metal clasp. Or suede clippings pressed between dried herbs. These are poetic references to craftsmanship.

Luxury brands have caught on. But the most successful examples are often the most subtle. Rather than shouting made by hand, they allow you to sense that a hand was once there. This approach shifts craft from evidence to atmosphere.

Where It’s Heading

The still life renaissance also opens speculative doors. As AI enters the scene, which makes auto-generating backdrops, lighting set-ups, even styling automatic, it’s possible we’ll see a return to the tactile as a counterweight. And out of the box concepts, that feel slightly random and weird as a counter reaction. Something AI wouldn’t come up with, because it bases its ideas on what’s already there and works.

Julie Kegels, for example, has shown how to build a narrative without a model at all. Her laid-out garments pressed into archival boxes, shaped into full outfits with sculptural precision, they read like small theatre sets. There is no person, but you sense the body. Showing mannequins in context at a hair salon gives a lived in feeling, yet makes it abstract and a bit whimsical. It’s a way to make curation experiential.

Conclusion

Still life photography today is strategic. In an attention economy, that’s what’s powerful. When an image refuses to immediately explain itself, it opens up a moment of curiosity. And in that moment, a deeper connection can form.

What we’re seeing is the return of a format with the come back of nuance. Imagery that rewards patience and rechallenges our attention span, even without using people. Of worlds that are built through attention to detail.

Because in the end, when done right, a single well-staged object can tell you everything about a brand. Its humour. Its sensitivity. Its edge. Its philosophy. All without saying a word.

Thank you for reading this essay! Hope you enjoyed it. Let me know if you’ve seen any interesting fashion still life’s recently. Would love to see it. Any requests for essays or newsletter topics are always welcome in the chat!

Love,

Zoe