El Gringo

Role

Concept and creative direction

Scope

Ride, collection, campaign

Where

Tabernas desert, Spain

Client

Fuel Motorcycles

The brief

A collection needed a place to come from

Tabernas is a desert in the south-east of Spain, tucked between the Sierra de los Filabres and the Sierra de Alhamilla. Almost nobody rides it. Barely any tourists, few people living there, and the spaghetti westerns were shot in it.

A collection built on that could have been a print exercise. The point was to make the place real first — for us, and for the riders who would end up wearing the gear.

The idea

Modern cowboys, on the ground the westerns were filmed on.

The western isn't a costume here, it's the location. Fort Bravo is a standing film set in the middle of the desert, and the terrain around it goes from dust to snow in a single day's ride. So we built the ride first and let the collection come out of it: the duster worn over a riding jacket against cold and rain, short yellow leather gloves cut like the ones used on horseback. Functional pieces that happen to look the part, rather than the other way round.

The work

Four days, and the collection that came out of them

The route started at Fort Bravo. The first hundred kilometres buried everyone in dust, then the climb went up to 1,800 metres, where the dry scrub turned into big trees and the dust turned into snow and mud. Frozen clutches, small crashes, bikes dropping behind. It finished at a meeting point with a barbecue and a fire, with riders pulling on their ponchos and dusters against the cold.

The El Gringo collection was designed around that: the landscape, the history and the way the gear actually got used over those days. Visually it takes from the spaghetti westerns and their characters; practically, every piece had a job on that ride.

Fort Bravo, a standing western set, and the start of the route.

At 1,800 metres the dust turns to snow. Same day, same ride.

The duster, worn over a riding jacket. Function and character.

A hundred kilometres of dust before the climb begins.

What came out of it

A ride that sells a collection

The ride and the collection launched together, each one making the case for the other. The gear was photographed where it had been used, on the riders who used it, which is a different argument from a studio shoot — and it gave the line a place to come from rather than a theme applied to it.

1,800m

from desert dust to snow

collection, designed around the route

studio shots

Same problem, different brand?

This kind of work starts with a thirty-minute call and a fixed scope.

See how I work