For its Summer 21 campaign, Carhartt WIP heads south in search of sun.

Set against a backdrop of old towns and countryside roads in post-industrial pockets of France, the campaign film is comprised of a series of short vignettes that swing between meditative and absurd, as three friends in a beat-up old car embark on a road trip with no destination in particular, other than an escape from restless summertime boredom. 

Slow in pace and without dialogue, its long, static shots allow the landscape and a series of non-places to act as the key aesthetic markers of the film, untethered to any one specific place or region. Its effect is to capture not so much a narrative, but a feeling, of boundless teenage energy puncturing the tranquility of its sleepy surroundings, and of seemingly trivial moments rendered significant with time. 

The campaign is directed by Joaquim Bayle and Sylvain Sey, who first met while working at Carhartt WIP’s store in Lille, France, before going on to establish themselves in Paris as a filmmaker and photographer respectively.

The clothes, meanwhile, are taken from the Carhartt WIP S/S21 men’s and women’s collections, and subtly complement the blue waters and dusty roads of Bayle and Sey’s imagery.