Concept campaign, self-initiated. Not a client · Fashion

Diesel

A self-initiated fashion campaign built to capture Diesel's industrial grit through high-energy, cinematic imagery.

This concept was created to explore how generative AI and retouching could express the raw, defiant energy of Diesel while keeping garments and hardware visually precise. Inspired by the brand's industrial attitude, distressed denim and bold accessories, I built a fiery world of heat, metal and urban tension. The campaign was designed to feel intense, rebellious and cinematic, with environmental lighting playing an active role in every frame. The main challenge was maintaining believable lighting logic and consistent product details, especially across skin, denim texture and metallic hardware within such a complex setting.

Services
  • Creative direction
  • Fashion campaign development
  • Retouching + compositing
What I made
  • Editorial fashion concept
  • High-energy campaign imagery
  • Portrait + action frames
  • Narrative visual world
How I work with fashion brands →

The brief

Diesel is a self-initiated denim campaign, made with AI. Diesel is not a client and had no part in it. The question I set myself was whether AI fashion photography could match a brand with this much attitude without losing the product, so that the fire and the setting catch the eye while the jeans and the buckle stay the thing you would buy.

My reference for the attitude was early-2000s denim advertising. The set had to work as a campaign, so it needed hero frames that carry the brand's name, full-length looks that show the cut and the wash of the jeans, a close portrait, and moments where the setting tells the story. Everything in the frames, the model and the burning hangar included, is made with AI.

The direction

I took the brand's name literally. The key visual looks down into a rusted fuel barrel with the Diesel name burning on its surface, and the last frame stands the model in front of a fuel tank with the name in flames. Between them is an abandoned hangar at dusk, which I described as neo-western, with steel rafters, broken windows, fire along the floor and pools of petrol throwing the orange light back up.

The palette is black, deep red and burnt orange. One AI model carries the campaign. He is lean, with dark wavy hair and light stubble, and wears a black ribbed tank, baggy faded jeans with heavy whiskering, black boots and a black leather belt with an oval D buckle. The oval D comes back as a sculpture behind him in the first look. The props belong to the same world. He leaps from a battered leather sofa and sits on the bonnet of an old American car, and an industrial fan sends fabric flying past him.

What was hard

Fire lights everything near it, so the light had to make sense in every frame before anything else could. I held the set to one rule, a single heat source, with every shadow on the denim agreeing with where the flames were. The wet floor adds to it, because every pool carries the fire's colour back up towards the jeans.

Holding one face through the set took preparation. Before the campaign frames, I made reference sheets for the model, with front, back, profile and three-quarter views, head and full length. The oval D on the buckle had to keep its shape in every look, even where it is only a few pixels wide, and the whiskering on the jeans had to stay where it was from one frame to the next. Finishing meant retouching and compositing, bringing separate elements into one light and one grade. I created the elements separately as references, then used AI tools to bring them together into the final scenes. Retouching focused mainly on shadows, reflections and lighting, making sure the water and fire interacted believably with the subjects and everything felt part of the same scene.