Dockers Rising

Photographer Sebastien Zanella transports us into his world of global skateboarding, surfing and street culture with this January 2023 Dockers campaign. Skate culture is one of the most unifying activities in the world — and AOC is thinking that Dockers is taking us on a world tour, with Edition 1 - Cairo, Egypt.

Yes, Dockers . . . good, old-fashioned Dockers khakis, part of Levi Strauss. Zanella just shot a new April Zara campaign, which is why AOC picked up Zanella doing Dockers in January before turning to Zara.

These perfect Dockers campaign images are driven by Zanella’s artistic vision, a sense of real-people models, tremendous intimacy between photographer and subject, and almost a collage mentality in creating image elements with different proportions.

Zanella’s IG is a visual blowout of harmonious, artistic complexity. He is a thinker . . . spreading his understanding of ubuntu worldwide. The positioning for Docker’s is stunning.

Zanella says:

"I have always been fascinated by the beautiful losers, the exquisite outsiders. They spurred me to create Desillusion more than 20 years ago in order to document the lifestyle of a generation misunderstood. But as I’ve grown, I’ve continued to discover how this attraction has permeated all aspects of my life.
Especially how it has driven my fascination with the unspectacular moment.

Sebastien Zanella’s Unique Images

Zanella’s film is on the Dockers landing page, and before even arriving there via Google, I noted all the references to sustainability in the search results. There’s a superb section on upcycling and mending Dockers that is run out of Los Angeles by a small team.

Originally part of Levi Strauss, Dockers was nearly sold in 2021/2022 but sanity prevailed. The Dockers® business is a hybrid of wholesale, retail/outlet and ecommerce and is distributed in over 15 countries across Europe, Asia and the Americas, according to their website.

With a California-cool mentality and a focus on both product innovation and sustainability, Dockers® has expanded beyond khakis and into a full lifestyle, casualwear, global brand. To be honest, AOC just fell down the rabbit hole, and in this moment the focus is photographer Sebastien Zanella. We’ll deal with Dockers separately.

The biggest compliment I can pay him is that I went to Zanella’s website, and immediately looked for a print to buy — except they are all sold out. His images are very exciting to my psyche. ~ Anne