Oliviero Toscani was the first artist that made me realise that you could use advertising and changes things.

Socially engaged advertising is a paradoxal business as “How can you do anything social when you are trying to sell things and encouraging capitalism?” But Toscani and Benetton proved that you actually can. 

Instead of promoting their products (which are revolutionarily completely absent from the ads), they promote their brand history, identity and political and social positions. They went as far as to change the name from Benetton to United Colors of Benetton, trying to remove the national (italian) identity of the brand to make it more universal and inclusive. They didn’t just approach social and political topics, they dived into very controversial issues, taking risky position that brands usually reject as they don’t want to offend anyone. 

This philosophy is oh so inspiring as it opens so many doors. As talked about before with MIA, you will never get everybody’s approval, but it shouldn’t stop you from trying. Yes Toscani’s campaigns were eventually aimed at selling sweaters and Benetton’s sales have soared with his innovative campaigns, but while doing so, he rose so much awareness.

And he did something that I really want to do with my practice : he used fashion tremendous influence on our society to say something important and talk about current issues. Fashion’s influence isn’t going anywhere, and most of the time, it isn’t saying a whole load of interesting things, so I think it is important for artists to act like catalysts, and use that exposure to bring issues to the public attention, even if you need to meddle with capitalism and commercial games to do so.

When Toscani was working for United Colors of Benetton, his images probably met a much wider audience than they would have if he were to have just made them and exhibited them on his own, under his sole name.