Florals? For fall? Groundbreaking, indeed! Well, perhaps not in the Meryl Streep sense of the word, but Camper has found a way of making the season’s most dependable motif feel pleasantly unhinged. Floratopia, its F/W26 campaign, imagines the shoe cupboard as a botanical laboratory: all glass domes, specimen labels and the sort of suspicious liquid that usually means somebody in a white coat should be worried.
Photographed by Amsterdam-based artists Blommers & Schumm, the campaign follows dancers Emma Portner and Toon Lobach as they inspect and classify the collection with the concentration of people trying to identify a very rare fungus. Then, naturally, flowers begin to grow out of the shoes. American illustrator Erik Winkowski supplies the blooms — lilies, ranunculi, tulips and daisies in loud, hand-drawn colour — while Emanuela Amato’s art direction keeps the whole experiment somewhere between a school science room and a fashion editorial that has been left unattended after hours.
The florals are not merely sprinkled on top for seasonal effect. They are embroidered and printed across familiar Camper silhouettes and new arrivals, lending leather a tactile, slightly eccentric surface. The asymmetry also makes sense of the brand’s Twins idea, introduced in 1988: the left shoe is deliberately different from the right, because nature, thankfully, has never been especially interested in matching sets. This time around, Dean Twins arrives as a derby and loafer, while Casi Myra Twins gives the ballet flat a botanical detour.
Elsewhere, Right Left makes its debut as a hybrid heel in the existing Right family, and Alaró, named after the Mallorcan village, brings a more winter-ready proposition. Pelotas, Camper’s 1995 mainstay, has meanwhile gone full boxer boot; it is made in Europe and comes with a lifetime guarantee, which feels almost reassuring in an era when a pair of trainers can develop a personality crisis after one festival weekend. Online, each specimen appears in Camperium, its own mock botanical taxonomy.
The collection is available from 2 September via Camper stores, selected retailers and camper.com.
