By designing a brand (AFW), a fashion show, outfits, promotional material, calendar, OOH media and website, we managed to immerse our audience into a very important experience: discovering what the challenging situation of the desert is like nowadays.

The building of the Atacama Fashion Week brand was able to drive the fashion industry’s attention to the environmental emergency taking place at the desert.

All graphic icons and design material paid homage to an international fashion week event. Also, the brand’s color was inspired by the desert sand. We used language and codes from the fashion world in a subversive manner.

No. It’s all promotional material.

Most of the discarded clothing in the Atacama Desert is made of polyester, a plastic-based fabric that takes up to 200 years to decompose. The constant burning of clothes at this landfill releases toxic fumes poisoning the soil, the ozone layer and harming the local population’s health, while the world of fashion turns a blind eye.

According to the UN, this is a social and environmental emergency for the planet. But unfortunately, most people don’t know about it. To make matters worse, the fashion industry continues to turn its back on the problem.

We needed to generate awareness about the problem.

Desierto Vestido is a local NGO from Chile. A leading voice in addressing illegal dumping in the Atacama Desert. They promote environmental awareness about clothing use and disposal. Their goal is to influence public policies and decisions that address the textile waste problem.

Fashion Revolution is a global movement that supports initiatives capable of mobilizing society in favor of fairer and more sustainable fashion.

Partnering with these brands makes all the sense, since they are in the front line fighting the problem and, through our work, we can help them to promote much-needed change.

Desierto Vestido and Fashion Revolution are fighting to mitigate the devastating effects of the fashion industry’s pollution issue, which profoundly harm our environment.

Situation:

The Atacama Desert became a giant landfill for the fashion industry. Tons of clothing being illegally dumped, by the fashion industry, in the middle of the desert turned the area into an emergency for the environment.

Brief:

Come up with an idea to raise awareness about the alarming situation in the Atacama Desert and get people to realize what’s going on in that area, especially the fashion industry.

Provoke stakeholders to encourage some change.

Objectives:

Grab the attention from the fashion industry, one of the most pollutant industries in the world, and the main responsible for the landfill’s extreme situation.

Get people from all over the world to be aware of the problem in the Atacama Desert.

Generate some change of behavior.

Budget: U$100,000

Since the fashion industry continues to turn its back on the problem, we created an event that couldn’t be ignored: the first fashion week held in the largest fashion landfill.

We turned the dunes of the Atacama Desert into a runway, to produce a fashion show in the actual landfill, where professional models wore outfits created by stylists, out of the discarded clothing.

With this idea, we allowed everyone to look at what the fashion industry refuses to see.

We led the fashion industry to confront this environmental disaster by playing their own game.

Desierto Vestido and Fashion Revolution are in the front line promoting sustainable fashion, which is extremely relevant to our idea.

Our target audience was mainly the fashion industry and its players, like clothing brands, professionals from the fashion world, designers, stylists, fashionistas, influencers, marketeers, stakeholders and every clothing consumer. Also, why not provoking the Chilean Government?

Atacama Fashion Week is a fashion event inspired by the great fashion weeks of the world. Its identity was reflected in a logo with an elegant typeface whose pointed serifs recall the cacti of the Atacama Desert. Complementary design elements draw on shipping graphics such as labels, bar codes, and icons - highlighting the other side of the problem: clothes arriving from all over the world and being dumped in the desert.

Inspired by the 4 "As" in Atacama, the logo symbolizes desert mountains and a stitched seam.

Like any other major fashion event, the Atacama Fashion Week has a monogram of its own.

Import/export elements within the graphic design resemble importation stamps.

Our fashion calendar, with covers made of discarded clothing from the landfill, exposes the daily crisis of the area. Its stylish editorial photos are juxtaposed with current data on the ongoing fashion waste problem in the desert.

A 550% increase in searches for "Clothes Landfill in Chile" and a 47% increase in searches for "Sustainable Fashion," culminating in the highest peak of searches for "Sustainable Clothing" in the last 12 months, immediately following the event. This heightened interest was accompanied by a 55% engagement rate and over 4,000 actions on the event's website.

People started to put pressure on brands. More than 50,000 emails sent by consumers to fashion brands, inquiring about their involvement and responsibility concerning the landfill.

The Atacama Fashion Week became part of the world’s fashion calendar.

After the event, clothes began being buried by tractors at the landfill, to conceal the issue, which started to gain more attention.