In April 2022, Balenciaga made headlines launching a collection of destroyed-looking sneakers that romanticised the “poor look”.

For The Salvation Army,  putting homelessness at the center of the social and political agenda has always been a challenge, being such a long-lasting, systemic issue.

That’s why we saw Balenciaga’s collection as an opportunity - we decided to leverage on their fame in order to shift the attention towards those living on the streets, reaching out an audience (the fashion industry) that is very disengaged from the topic.

And we did so by creating a fashion collection of truly destroyed shoes, previously worn by real poor people. We followed the usual fashion codes (including a photo shoot with photographer Carli Hermès) and formats - replicating Balenciaga’s communication style, website look & feel and community engagement in social media - building a social-first campaign that ended up going viral and making headlines worldwide in fashion publications like Vogue and Hypebeast.