EDUN Goes to the Birds for Fall 2012

July 23, 2012

Take a love of beautiful clothes + a desire to create change + the resources to actually do something about it & you get something like EDUN, the brainchild of Bono & his wife, Ali Hewson. Founded in 2005, it's now part of the LVMH fam which has helped it spread its eco-chic wings into a global brand that does actual good: using the power of the fashion biz to help to grow trade in Africa, including the goal to produce almost half its seasonal fashion collection there by 2013. In addition to supporting local manufacturers, infrastructure and community-building initiatives, the brand also monitors compliance to their code of conduct by requiring any factories it uses to submit to a biannual audit.

For the Fall 2012 campaign, photographer Ryan McGinley was inspired by the brand's duality of cool clothes on the one hand & creating social change on the other. Using five different birds of prey to symbolize the wisdom and knowledge of Africa, he had them swoop across the images and land on the models-turned-human-perches. Warm, yellowish lighting brings the African sun to mind, while the feathered hunters - a barn owl, an eagle owl, a spectacled owl, a scoop owl & a peregrine falcon - collectively add a playful touch. "These birds are a perfect metaphor for the wild, carefree spirit of Edun," adds Hewson. "We wanted to continue the idea of transformation and lightness, and the beauty and the energy of Africa is inherent in these images and our brand - a perfect collision of flight and fashion."