Have Moon Boot Missed a Trick?
Moon Boot has debuted their FW23 campaign, ‘SNOW CHASERS’, and I can’t help but feel they’ve missed an opportunity to drag climate change into the limelight, starting the conversation outside of strategic reports, ESG ‘promises,’ and ‘Section 1: Chair Statement’s.’
Since 1969 when the founder of the Tecnica Group, Giancarlo Zanatta, first designed the idea of the ‘Moon Boot’, an emulation of the astronauts’ antigravity boots worn during the Apollo II landing, it was inevitable that Zanatta, his boots, and his brand were the avant-garde of après-ski. The last 50 years have been Zanatta bridging the tribulation between fashion and functionality, emphasizing his shoemaking heritage while being a paradigm for innovation, and remaining a paradigm for innovation half a century later.
Photos via @moonboot on Instagram
“It was new and it still is,” remains the quintessential culture of the brand. Through their audacious logo placement condemning the quiet luxury of the ’70s, to becoming an idiosyncratic marketing force leading the ‘gorpcore’ aesthetic and sparking conversations, the brand has not fallen short this season.”
Their campaign, ‘SNOW CHASERS,’ though incredibly authentic, is arguably even more reason to be a brand of advocacy for climate change. Not only to pay homage to their culture as a catalyst for change but to give nonconformity a seat at the table.
Shot by Rosie Marks, the campaign utilizes the typical metropolis landscapes of London to reinvent the ‘winter escape’. Moon-booted up, goggles on; skis in hand, models pose alongside TFL buses and take refuge on patches of faux snow in the park, romanticizing the Alps, in all their snowy glory… and romanticize it will remain if climate change is not addressed with a sense of urgency.
Moon Boots 2023, FW23 campaign Moon Boot
One shot, in particular, in which faux snow is meagerly scattered across browning grass, serves unintentionally as a reminder of the current terrains in the geographic north; where global warming advances snowfall reduction and ice cap melting. Research suggests that more than half of Europe’s ski resorts face the potential ‘high-risk’ of snow scarcity with a rise of 2 degrees Celsius, so supposedly, Moon Boot will need to begin targeting urban demographics for more reasons than just aesthetics.
Sustainability as the newest ‘trend’ has left the fashion industry certainly attempting to increase their responsibilities. The ‘Global Fashion Agenda’ is hosting a critical leadership assembly during the COP28 meetings commencing from November 30th, and the UNCC’s climate action program, the ‘Fashion Industry Charter for Climate Action,’ seeks to hold the industry accountable; championing for corporations to meet their environmental SDGs.
Though, like most other industries facing ESG investor pressures, stricter climate-related targets, and consumer demands for transparency/accountability, it is evident now more than ever that the industry continues to place climate change on the backburner. Moon Boot is one example of an industry’s worth of corporations that could be doing more. For a brand to have consistently proven they can change the narrative, why stop at climate change?
And when Greenpeace said ‘we need more climate conversations in the mainstream,’ they most likely did not mean in the sense of Kim Kardashian’s attempt to use rising temperatures as a selling point for Skims… just a thought.
