Lee Jeans links with Jamel Shabazz for SS19 campaign

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
Mar 6, 2019

Lee Jeans has launched its SS19 ad campaign and is celebrating its heritage and its 1980s street style popularity with archive references, while also channelling a modern hip-hop attitude.

It was shot by street style photographer Jamel Shabazz whose own archive is as important here as the brand’s because of the heritage he brings with him.

Shabazz was “responsible for capturing some of the most iconic moments from the early beginnings of New York's hip-hop and fashion scene,” the company said.

Lee Jeans has “sifted through” its archive, “finding pieces that are laced with that old-school attitude, reimagined for today,” it explained. And Shabazz has taken Lee’s SS19 offering back to New York City, "using the same streets and neighbourhoods that are found in [his] original book, Back in the Days.” In homage to this, the new campaign is called Back to Today.

Alongside the models, the campaign makes use of his network of friends and creatives, “street-casting New Yorkers whose aesthetic is imbued [with] authentic hip-hop styling.”

They include Bronx streetstyle icon Kool-Out-K (@koolout_k) and DJ Lee Rock (@leerock_starski), whose “genuine love of the 80s has made them local heroes and a source of international sartorial inspiration,” Lee said.

And the collaboration between the brand and the photographer also sees the Back to Today campaign released as a limited-edition book of the same title. “A celebration and reimagining of 1980s hip-hop style, this tribute to Back in the Days book will contain the best photographs from Lee’s SS19 campaign,” we’re told.