Tim Walker explores The Art of Craftsmanship for Tod’s.

Tod’s celebrats the tradition of craftsmanship and Italian know-how with The Art of Craftsmanship, a project in collaboration with internationally renowned photographer, Tim Walker. The series launched with an exhibition during Milan Design Week 2023 at the Cavallerizze of the Museo Nazionale della Scienza e della Tecnologia Leonardo Da Vinci.

Tod’s founding values of craftsmanship and the excellence of ‘Made in Italy’ are interpreted by Walker, allowing the luxury brand to convey these values also to the younger generations.

From the encounter between Walker’s creativity and Tod’s tradition, comes a story made up of images and videos, that retraces in an ironic and surreal way the phases of the creation of the brand’s iconic products—from the Di Bag to the Gommino. With a contemporary language, the artist plays on the proportions of the objects made and the tools that accompany and represent the most important craftsmanship steps—cutting the leather, stitching and brushing.

Check-Mate Editorial Photographed by Tim Walker for Vogue Italia.

Consistently ethereal beyond comprehension, with a darkness and depth that leaves you looking longer and wanting more, Walker truly is one of the world’s most evocative storytellers...

“In this increasingly digital world, where so much is being created on an industrial scale by machines, the value of craftsmanship is increasingly precious,” Walker elaborates. “The people I met in the company and their experience were the real source of inspiration.”

With Walker behind the lens, the brand celebrates the concept of hand-made quality and a world that still uses needles and threads, scissors, tape measures and brushes and proven manual skills—shining a light on the artisans of Brancadoro—protagonists of a cut-and-sew tradition that is being lost in the world of fashion.

While Walker hasn’t photographed the cutting and recutting of leather but made the protagonists of the story into illustrated cutouts; placing them instead on a brush for the magic to be on full display.

Photographer Reverses Gender Roles in a Clever Interpretation of Sexist Vintage Ads.

This fresh series of photographs featuring a collection of fictional advertisements refashioned from real print ads torn from the Mad Men era...

In The Art of Craftsmanship, each image tells a story of quality and tradition, reminding us that behind every product are the tools that make it and that behind each of these are the hands and knowledge of those who use them.

Each of these images resonates with a message of art and beauty, of knowledge and work well done—symbols of those authentic values that today even the youngest are rediscovering and for which Tod’s is known. Well played.

Uncanny Eye Candy by Brooke DiDonato.

There’s a melancholic desperateness in this work that echoes the soullessness of our day-to-day existence. The boredom. The repetitiveness...

[Images courtesy of Tod’s. Photography by Tim Walker.]