View The Inception Collection

Classy and confident yet playful and sexy, muk elevated its brand image with a new campaign in collaboration with one of the world’s foremost fashion photographers, Rankin, writes Cameron Pine.

It was muk founder, Mark Gariglio’s vision to create a campaign that was more of a luxury brand, fragrance style campaign as opposed to a hairdressing campaign but with a combination of lengths, shapes and textures in the hair.

“The objective of this shoot is to create a vibe which has an element of tongue in cheek, playing on our brand name. The idea was to shoot the girls nude but not too revealing – keeping an element of mystique for the viewer, creating a primary focus on the hair,” said muk creative director, Mark Gariglio.

“While this is a big departure from what we’ve done before, it’s also a sign that our brand has come of age. We still wanted to ensure the focus is on the hair – the hair is the star of the show and we can’t let the viewers forget that,” Mark said.

It was important for the women to have a natural beauty and subtle sultry sexiness – reflected in a paired down make up direction with a dewy, glossy complexion, finished with a smoky eye.

The composition of the images all focused on capturing authentic and playful interactions between the women, laughing, chatting and exchanging energy like in real-life conversations.

To bring this vision to life, Mark enlisted one of the world’s best Creative Directors, Nick Irwin to reflect through imagery that Muk is now in a different era. The objective was to shoot powerful women in their purest form – while they are naked you don’t necessarily view them as naked.

“We called the shoot inception, as the idea is coming from what the brand has done in the past – in order to move forward we need to look at where the brand had been and what they had created in the first place,” Nick said.

Coming out of the powerhouse that was TIGI for so many years, Nick wants to work on things at a smaller scale, but at the same time feel proud to be able to change the direction for smaller brands. “To help them grow but make it something a little bit special,” Nick said.

“I’ve worked with some of the biggest photographers, models, magazines and celebrities in the world and feel this can only enhance what I do as a hairstylist. So here we are and I feel like working with Muk has come at the perfect time in my career. There’s no end to the incredible collaborations that we have planned to help push our industry forward,” Nick said.

Nick’s well-earned advice to any creative is to always be open and on the lookout for how you can learn and grow. “Personally I was looking for a brand that I could see huge potential in to re-ignite my journey but one that was family owned, spoke purely with passion and integrity and one that was about creating exciting innovative products, education and image for the hairdresser,” he said.

For more information visit www.mukhair.com