Moose Knuckles Spring/Summer 2019 Campaign

Moose Knuckles Gang Takes Over Montreal For S/S19 Campaign! Canadian lifestyle, luxury brand Moose Knuckles debuts its Spring/Summer 2019 campaign and a collection featuring tributes to their Montreal stomping grounds and the iconic Expo ’67.

In the summer of 1967, Montreal hosted the International and Universal Exposition. It was a futuristic spectacle that catapulted the city onto the world map and projected an image of Canadian unity, a perception that still remains today. The architecture, artwork, and graphics that stylized the event exhibited some of the best design talents in Canada at that time, also known as the Golden Age of Graphic Design.

At the same moment in 1967, another iconic event was happening just 600 kilometres away in New York City. Ralph Lauren’s first complete line of sportswear tailored clothing was launched under the name Polo. Ralph Lauren’s Polo brand and Montreal’s Expo ’67 both exhibited the colours, bold graphics, and sportswear inspired design that exemplified the North American aesthetic of the modern 1960s. Simplistic geometric configurations, colour-blocked Sophomore Yellow, Academic Green, Varsity Maroon, Team Blue, and Track Red are the cornerstones of midcentury Canadian graphic design and archetypical 70s sportswear.

Almost 20 years later, the primary colours and sporty styles of 1967 were adopted by an unlikely group of young men from Brooklyn. They called themselves The Lo Lifes, and together they started a movement united through a singular passion: acquiring and wearing as much Polo as humanly possible, which usually meant stealing it.

Inspired by The Lo Lifes, Moose Knuckles’ Creative Director, Steph Hoff, conceptualized a fictitious gang for the Spring Summer 2019 campaign, featuring a cast of Canada-based models and shot Toronto fashion photographer, Luis Mora. The story follows the Knuckle Heads, a band of misfits unified in their mission to boost Moose Knuckles by any means necessary. The Montreal crew terrorizes the city and becomes a menace to society.

Just as quickly as Moose Knuckles’ newest Spring/Summer 2019 collection is flooding the floors of upscale retail stores in Quebec, the vibrant retro sportswear styles are being hijacked by the growing number of Knuckle Heads terrorizing the city. What started in 1967 as a design trend has mutated into a crime cult spanning two cities, and claiming two iconic sportswear styles for the street.