MZ Wallace, the New York-based luxury handbag and accessories brand, is breaking out with its first brand campaign with a witty take on its signature Metro tote bag.
The irreverent campaign pairs drawings by British artist David Shrigley, best known for his sly social commentary, with the surreal still lifes that Swiss photographer Raymond Meier shot in response to them.
The ads, which break Monday, are presented in diptych form with one Shrigley drawing matched with the corresponding Meier image. The rest of the campaign unfolds throughout the year in digital and print outlets as well as on the company’s own platforms and outdoor placements.
MZ Wallace, known for its lightweight premium bags that are smart and functional, was founded by Monica Zwirner and Lucy Wallace Eustice in 2000. Its products range from backpacks and shoulder bags to crossbodies and wallets.
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“We decided to launch a brand campaign because we’re going toward our 25th year in business. We advertise a lot online [brand advertising]. It’s the first time we thought about a campaign that would play out over time, that would have a sense of creativity and would be challenging in some ways,” Zwirner said in a Zoom interview along with Wallace Eustice.
“It’s potentially confusing but also inspiring, and we’d make people look at it and question, ‘I’ve never seen anything like this before,’” Zwirner added.
The pair worked with Dennis Freedman, formerly creative director of W Magazine and Barneys New York.
“The wit, depth and universal appeal of Shrigley’s drawings perfectly resonate with the ethos of MZ Wallace,” Zwirner said. “Their simplicity, like the form and function of our bags, belies their ingenuity. And Meier’s interpretations, adding his own surreal twist, reflect the brand’s embrace of individual expression.”
Zwirner said the idea was to put Shrigley and Meier into talks with each other. Meier was able to react to these drawings “using our product as the jumping off point,” she said.
“The wonderful thing that happened during our first meeting with Meier, he asked what product do you want to shoot, what season, what color, and we had brought many bags to look at. We looked at all of them and put our Medium Metro tote on the table, and said, ‘Ultimately, it’s really about this bag. It really is our hero product,’” Zwirner said.
“Raymond said, ‘I really think it should be the Metro tote. It’s really your Birken,’” Zwirner continued. “When we said yes, he couldn’t believe it, and said no brand would do that, no brand would just shoot one shape. It’s always about the newest, the latest, the season. At that moment, he realized we were open to working creatively and in a slightly different capacity than his usual fashion clients. It was a really wonderful, collaborative process,” Zwirner said.
Consequently all the images are with the Metro tote, which it introduced in 2007.
“It’s our iconic bag. It doesn’t go on sale, and it doesn’t date,” Zwirner said. It starts at $195 and goes up to $285.
For example, Shrigley’s depiction of a lemon, captioned with the handwritten text, “When life gives you a lemon…you must eat the lemon, all of it including the skin,” prompted Meier’s photograph of a tote hanging from a leg in a cast that appears to be bursting through a wall. Shrigley’s giant blue beetle with spindly legs, accompanied by the text, “Impressive Bug for You to Admire,” is juxtaposed with Meier’s own concocted bug made from an overturned red tote with assorted golf clubs supporting it.
Zwirner said Meier knew Shrigley and admired his work. “He said rather than just do some kind of still life, they should connect in a way. He thought ultimately it would be interesting when people looked at these pairings [that] it could appear that Shrigley had commented on Raymond’s pictures as much as Raymond commenting on David Shrigley. There’s a true dialogue; it’s sometimes obvious and sometimes subversive and sometimes hard to figure out,” Zwirner said.
“We loved that this campaign doesn’t look like anything else, and neither does our product,” Zwirner said.
“Monica and Lucy made a decision to go in a bold direction for their first campaign, which points to their vision and unconventional way of doing things,” said Freedman, who is known for his pioneering approach to fashion photography. “They brought in two independent creatives to tell their story and put them in dialogue with each other.”
Meier, who has lensed campaigns for many brands, relished the assignment for the opportunity it gave him to work in new directions. “Few brands do advertising like this anymore,” Meier said. “With most commercial campaigns, you have to commit 100 percent to an idea in advance. Here, without that pressure, I was able to take more risks and only then do you have a chance to produce something extraordinary. You want to see something new. These are pictures you haven’t seen before,” he said.
MZ Wallace has long engaged with artists through its MZ Wallace Gives Back program, which has produced collaborations with Glenn Ligon, Njideka Akunyili Crosby and Nick Cave, among others, to raise funds for partner nonprofit and humanitarian organizations dedicated to positive change.
The campaign goes live Monday with a takeover of Boston’s Copley Square station in support of the brand’s Boston pop-up, followed by ads in print and on digital outlets nationally, as well as on the company’s own platforms and in its New York and Chicago stores. Major placements include an eight-page portfolio in the Young Artists issue of Cultured magazine and the Miami, Palm Beach and Fort Lauderdale, Fla., airports ahead of Art Basel in December. Further ads will be revealed over the year.
Zwirner said MZ Wallace is largely a direct-to-consumer brand. The business, which started its e-commerce site in 2004, is currently 60 percent direct-to-consumer.
The B Corp-certified company sells at such retailers as Neiman Marcus, Saks Fifth Avenue, Bloomingdale’s, Nordstrom, Holt Renfrew and specialty stores across the country and Equinox, Wallace Eustice said. The company, which is privately held and produces its bags in Asia, generates between $100 million and $200 million in volume, Zwirner said.
When the company started, it had its own store on Crosby Street, “but it’s now a bigger store on Crosby Street,” Zwirner said. “We had a good period of time to build up that business. We layered in wholesale at a certain point. It’s really a three-legged stool,” Wallace Eustice said.
She said part of the reason it was so important to open a store was to have “that direct conversation with our customers.”
On deck is a collaboration with dancers at The New York City Ballet, who wear the quilted nylon MZ tote. MZ Wallace is collaborating with ballet dancers Megan Fairchild and Joseph Gordon and have customized a backpack, a duffel and a cosmetic bag for their needs. A portion of the sales is going to Ballet Tech, which introduces New York City public school children to the beauty, integrity and joy of dance.
