Diesel knows no borders when it wants to impress its fans. The apparel brand, which has made a shocking tongue-in-cheek therapy the major element of its advertising campaigns, is introducing a new male underwear line with an ironic art twist. The new project, The Art of Color—which has become the third installation of the Diesel Fresh&Bright campaign, is revolving around the art of coloring underwear. For the promotion, the brand teamed up with Swiss/French artists Ben (Benoit Créac’h) & Julia (Julia Gaudard), who developed three totally unpredicted interactive installation, each dedicated to one of the cuts.
The whole thing (soaked with colors and somewhat absurdist) starts with white—the three cuts on an almost naked hot guy work as canvas— and then the color is added in an extraordinary way. “Your eyes will ache. Strange smells will rise. Jaws will burst open. Your mouth overflows like a biblical flood… but is it art?” notes Diesel in the promo video on YouTube. The brand offers three interactive experience of splashing color on the underwear—with licking tongues, which eyes of a unicorn’s head, and with spray bottles—and the only thing you have to do is to choose one shade from the 6-color palette.
“A duo of Boxer Trunk Licking Lollipops give viewers a taste of color in the first piece, ‘Oh Mother Where Art Thou’. In the second installation, ‘How She Used To Look at Me’, tension is palpable as the Briefs are zapped seductively with color, by a laser-eyed unicorn. Meanwhile, ‘Your Mind Sprays Tricks’ is a feast of robotic precision, as handroid wielding spray-cans take control to paint the Boxer Briefs,” writes Diesel.
Before the official launch of the project, Diesel shared some behind the scenes photos on Pinterest and asked public on the social media platforms to try and say what they were about. The brand asked its fans ‘Can you guess what we’re making?’, obviously just for teasing and spreading the word about the campaign, not for getting a reply, because it’s just impossible to identify these objects. The brand also asked its fans across Facebook, Twitter and Google+ ‘What does green mean?’, ‘What’s so good about orange?’ ‘or ‘How do you see red?’ for a better engagement.
The project aims to evoke the great feeling of being a creator, when you add your personal touch to a virgin sheet of paper or room. Such elements as light blue and white space and Damien Hirst-styled dots on the color picker, sharp and clean podiums and light add to the atmosphere of a contemporary art gallery. The android elements—long seducing tongues in the pink spheres, hands stretching out of brains and of course the head with magic eyes—which are actually painting the underwear, marry science and art for Diesel and its fans.