A nationwide design challenge. No templates, no guardrails, just a brief and the expectation we'd figure it out.
No formal ranking was announced after presentations. But that response meant something.
Abercrombie & Fitch ran a nationwide design challenge, Sophomore Summit, and selected roughly 80 students with a 3.0 GPA minimum, portfolio required. We were handed a brief: build an original clothing campaign for A&F and Hollister.
My team built a full Spring/Summer campaign: trend research, visual identity, marketing collateral, a community mechanic, and a product strategy. When we presented Denim Darlin' to the A&F executive directors, one of them said it truly felt like something Hollister would implement and move towards.
Campaign hero — the final deliverable, designed to drive Hollister app acquisition.
I was the marketing lead for the team, concretely meaning I personally built: digital mockups placed in everyday settings, in-app promotional layouts, email blasts, social assets, and the Instagram challenge framework, including the #HollisterDarlin community mechanic. I also consulted on overall design choices throughout the process of fashion design and brand collateral.
Working with fashion designers and UX designers gave me a clear picture of the energy they wanted the collection to carry. My job was amplifying that energy, not creating it.
We started with social media research, specifically Instagram and TikTok. Denim was everywhere, and there was a western energy tied to the Beyoncé Cowboy Carter moment that was popular at the time.
Early sketchbook research — the raw trend pool we were pulling from before anything got refined.
We landed on a country granddaughter aesthetic: youthful, nostalgic, denim-forward. A Blue Ivy angle came up early, but we ended up pivoting away quickly; if we had to work that hard to make a reference land (especially with an audience that may not be familiar), the campaign wouldn't be as appealing.
We wanted something that felt like it could be Hollister without screaming cowboy. Western-inspired, not western-costumed.
WGSN https://www.wgsn.com/en flagged Rodeo Renaissance and Cartoonification as trends for Spring/Summer '25, and Runway coined "Denim for Days". These forecasting sources reinforced the same vision we were seeing online, and we felt more comfortable committing.
Focus on a pastoral or rodeo direction and be mindful of your storytelling when referencing cultural patterns. Apply to graphic tops for the young market, and invest in crafted elements and embroidery for the mature market.
WGSN flagged Rodeo Renaissance as a strong growth trend for S/S 25 — exactly what we'd already felt on TikTok.
Before we developed anything visual, we built two customer profiles to keep us on track, based on A&F Co.'s central customer demographic.
JaNa and Serena: the two archetypes every creative decision ran through.
We also mapped the influencer ecosystem around our customers. The goal wasn't just reach/follower count, it was demographic fit. We wanted one creator for each end of the Hollister spectrum.
Body positivity and youth empowerment. Her try-on content works because she makes every body feel like the point, not the exception.
The creator who makes Hollister feel like a brand that actually means it.
Fashion content built for Gen-Z teens — hauls, unboxing, GRWMs. She's already featured Hollister organically.
She represents the customer who discovers brands through creators, not ads.
We started with an open brainstorm, which is where the original pivot from the Blue Ivy collab happened: we kept the feeling of western-wear, but removed the dependency on her specific reference.
From there the team split into two parallel tracks: fashion designers focused on fabric, silhouette, and what would work across the clothing pirces; marketing and UX worked on brand identity at the same time. We checked in between the two groups regularly, which is where we could identify when the clothing and the brand were starting to tell different stories, and course-correct.
Two early directions before landing on the final.
The finalized moodboard — where all the directions collapsed into one.
The identity had to be recognizably western, but wearable enough that someone who wasn't making a statement could still reach for it on a regular day. We decided on a muted palette with pops of red and navy, which emphazied an "Americanized" quality. We wanted it to feel warm and familiar without crossing into costume territory.
Better Cotton Twill Denim and Better Cotton Denim gave the collection its backbone: weights that feel like something quality, that hold an intended crease, and that don't read as fast fashion. Linen and Cotton Jersey were brought in for lighter seasonal pieces.
The palette pulled from WGSN's S/S 25 colors: dusty blue, navy, crimson, cream.
The finalized color palette and material selections for the Denim Darlin' collection.
The prints were always part of the brief, specifically the 2008–2018 print revival we'd flagged in trend research. Before anything got refined into a final pattern, we sketched out early ideas to figure out the visual language: how bold, how abstract, how much it should lean western versus something more graphic and nostalgic.
Where the print patterns started — rough, iterative, figuring out what the collection wanted to say.
The font ideation was about finding something that could hold the western warmth of the collection without tipping into novelty; both legible in a social feed and expressive in a physical sign.
Early type exploration — finding the typographic voice before the digital system locked in.
The finalized type direction for the website and digital campaign.
Sustainability was built around Better Cotton. Not only was it an ethical constraint, it was a signifigant brand story worth telling.
Other synthetic fibers require 342 million barrels of oil and release 8 million tons of plastic annually. That context gave the campaign a layer of integrity that extended past the visual.
By sourcing exclusively from natural fibers and ethically proven suppliers, the collection could speak to Serena without losing JaNa. Sustainability was positioned as a design value, not a disclaimer.
Better Cotton Initiative certification: the sourcing story made visible on the product itself.
The idea I'm most proud of from this project is the charm bracelet concept (people love collecting things, and they love personalizing things). The #HollisterDarlin hashtag and the pop-up photobooth already gave customers a way to physically enter the campaign, but the charm bracelet extended that into something you could wear and carry with you.
The #HollisterDarlin social campaign — anyone can be a cowgirl.
Pop-up photobooth activation and printed photo strip: the IRL layer of the campaign.
15% of each charm purchase going back to farms and agricultural spaces gave the campaign a charitable layer; the exec directors responded to it specifically. They thought it was a strong way to integrate community and conscientiousness into a campaign that could have easily just been aesthetics.
JaNa and Serena's identities largely shaped specific components of our campaign — from the mockup settings to the fabric sourcing to the charm bracelet's charitable model. Here's how each of their perspectives ran through the finished work, including the following:
She lives her life in front of cameras and in crowds — so the mockups ended up in front of cars and at concerts instead of haybales.
She set the visual benchmark: would you actually wear this on a regular Tuesday?
She reads the label, shops secondhand, decides which trends she trusts — so the collection runs entirely on natural fibers.
She's why the charm bracelet mechanic included a 15% charitable donation to Flying Horse Farms rather than just being a branded collectible. She needed the campaign to mean what it said.
I didn't want to show the collection only in western settings: haybales, farms, open fields. That would have made it a costume. The whole concept was western-inspired, not western-costumed.
Instead, I placed the clothes in the settings our actual customer lives in. JaNa doesn't live on a farm, she lives in front of cameras, at concerts, on streets. You don't have to want to be a cowgirl to reach for these pieces, and they should integrate well into other styles when needed.
I would buy this even if I didn't want to be a cowgirl. The benchmark we held every decision against.
The community layer: collectible charms, charitable giving, and IRL activation.
Lifestyle mockups: the collection placed in everyday settings, not western ones.
Social and email extensions: same warmth, same voice, across every touchpoint.
The more interesting challenge was navigating creative overlap. The lanes get blurry fast when everyone has opinions, and we had to work together as total strangers. I had real feelings about where the logo should go, but someone else on the team cared more about it and had a clearer vision. So, I stepped back.
What I found was that stepping back on that one thing gave me room to do something more useful. I took their logo and built the entire marketing layer around it. They got to own their contribution fully, and I got to be the person who made everything cohere. That felt better than holding my ground would have, and we were able to move forward as a team cohesively.
The question we kept coming back to, whether or not we named it explicitly: does this actually serve the finished product? If it does, push for it. If it doesn't, let it go. I think that's what kept us from getting in each other's way.
