Norway's Northern Playground Shames Influencers With a Dress of Discards

And more creative highlights from Europe

A few generations ago, people largely made their own clothes, or had them tailored, then wore them to death. Now influencers might wear something once for a cool picture or video, then discard the items. Coupled with fast fashion, and an overall decline in clothing quality, this encourages others to do the same.

In Norway, people buy 70,000 tons of clothes yearly. Thus, Norwegian clothing brand Northern Playground partnered with agency Try to teach local influencers to, um, wear things more than once. The “Worn Once Dress” is made from repurchased items that influencers wore once, then sold. It looks like a mess, but it’s designed to make their past owners do a double-take: Like, is that repurposed blouse mine?

“‘Worn once’ has become a quality stamp in the second-hand market, but it’s also proof of the fashion industry’s biggest problem: overconsumption,” say creatives Hallvard Valand and Mathias Sandvik.

The dress—designed to be taken apart again—was presented at the Vixen Influencer Awards’ red carpet, worn by comedian St. Sunniva ahead of the arrival of well-known influencers.

“Influencers are more than welcome to retrieve their garments,” says Northern Playground marketing manager Pardis Molavi. “They just need to promise to wear them multiple times.”

To punt its aspirations for the use of AI in architecture, French sustainable construction firm Saint-Gobain worked with agency Heaven to reimagine what various places could look like in a few decades. Think fewer skyscrapers and cars, more walking spaces and plants: cities as nature-informed habitats, where humans live harmoniously in surroundings that aren’t corseted by concrete and shrouded in smoke.

The project is titled “7 Visions of the Future” and enlists four AI artists: Hedy Magroun, Aurélien Pakula, Stéphane Munnier and Sandramaria Schweda. Amongst other things, they produced European eco-districts, reimagined West African structures, elaborate Pacific island cities, a climate-resilient Florida, Mexico with sustainable mobility and a more cohesive Shanghai. A lot of it is like what Middle Earth would look like if hobbits and elves were more collaborative. Here’s a reflective first-react to the work.

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Everything that happens politically in the U.S. has an impact on the west at large. So, these past few weeks have seen a chaotic scramble by European and other countries to rejigger alliances as the new administration goes to war with the U.S. Constitution.

Notably, Elon Musk issued an endorsement for Germany’s AfD, an extreme far-right party that’s attractive to the country’s blossoming Andrew Tates. So, for German beer brand BRLO, AKQA created its own anti-AfD endorsement, which acts as a tacit commitment to diversity and inclusion (which tend to get erased in America these days.). Germany’s having a snap parliamentary election on Feb. 23. The fewer votes the AfD gets, the cheaper BRLO beer gets.

The activation went live on Feb. 12, building on the promise of “Less hate, more hops.”

The work stands as a testament to the responsibility brands and advertisers have toward communities. We’re saying “responsibility” without irony. In consumerist countries, where it’s more common for individuals to be blamed for the trickle-down ills of capitalism, the investments and choices brands make are absolutely political, whether they assume the role or not. (Consider Google’s controversial decision to alter its widely-used maps and calendars.)