Check Out
- Campaign Concept & Creative Direction
- Performance & Spatial Intervention
- Editorial Photography & Film
- Cultural Commentary & Activation Strategy
Check Out reimagined the supermarket as runway, reframing one of the most banal consumer spaces as a site of luxury spectacle. Models were staged in self-checkout aisles, frozen mid-transaction in couture, or posed against walls of stacked plastic-packaged goods. The campaign highlighted the absurdity of fashion’s relationship to consumerism, turning fluorescent-lit mundanity into an unsettling tableau of irony and desire.
A/M developed the campaign as a hybrid between performance art and editorial intervention. Live activations were staged in closed supermarkets, with models remaining static under buzzing lights while cash registers beeped in loops. Photography treated the environment clinically — high flash, harsh contrast, CCTV-inspired framing. Film sequences exaggerated the soundscape of retail: scanner beeps, conveyor belts, humming refrigerators — transforming them into a sonic score that clashed with Balenciaga’s tailored severity.
Check Out debuted as a series of guerrilla-style activations in Berlin and New York, followed by global rollout across print, digital, and billboards. Viral clips of models in couture scanning grocery items generated massive traction on TikTok and Instagram, where users remixed the campaign’s irony into memes and edits. The campaign was praised in Dazed, Highsnobiety, and Another for its provocative critique of consumerism while cementing Balenciaga’s role as fashion’s cultural disruptor.
- Creative Direction — A/M
- Photography — Juergen Teller
- Film — Romain Gavras
- Styling — Balenciaga Paris
- Production — Iconoclast Paris
