SS26 Swimwear & Underwear Campaign
For its SS26 swimwear and underwear campaign, DSQUARED2 wanted something the brand is known for chasing: heat, boldness, and a setting that can’t be replicated in a studio. Rafael Moura and Gustavo Migliora of Mawe Productions partnered with Babilônia Productions to deliver exactly that, a campaign shot after dark in Rio, where the city’s energy doesn’t fade with the sun. The challenge was finding locations that could carry both sensuality and edge, and making a nighttime shoot in the favela feel as cinematic as it deserved to be.
The location was the concept. We scouted the Babilônia favela for spots that most productions would never find, rooftops, staircases, corners where the city lights stretch out below, places that bring sensuality and rawness together in a single frame. This is home turf for us, and it shows: access, trust, and local knowledge turned locations into collaborators.
Shooting at night pushed the visual language toward fire and shadow, warm skin tones against deep blacks, the glow of the city as a natural backdrop. The result is a campaign that feels dangerous in the best way, bold enough to match DSQUARED2’s identity, and unmistakably Rio.
The campaign delivered what a global fashion house comes to Rio for: imagery with a pulse. Fiery, nocturnal, and impossible to mistake for anywhere else in the world, the work gave DSQUARED2’s SS26 collection a setting as bold as the product itself. And for Babilônia, it was a statement of what we bring to international productions, the neighborhood is in our name, and nobody shoots it like we do.
