The A.P.C. x Clarks Originals collection arrived in the house this morning and stopped the conversation immediately.

We've been sitting with this one all morning and keep coming back to the same feeling. A.P.C. and Clarks Originals. Two brands that have spent decades earning the right to say less just made something together and the result feels exactly like both of them.

The collection centres on two known silhouettes. Styles that have already lived.

The Desert Boot, originally designed by Nathan Clark in the 1940s, was inspired by boots worn by off-duty British Army officers in Egypt during the Second World War and is the boot that has gone on to be worn by jazz musicians, beatniks and mods before Steve McQueen and Bob Dylan turned it into something culturally iconic. 

Then comes the Weaver, born as an evolution of the Wallabee with a box stitch and a more streamlined silhouette. Which actually celebrates its 50th anniversary next year. 

Both shoes are built from full-grain leather with a crepe sole that improves with age. A.P.C. hasn't tried to update them. They've simply brought them into their world, in denim-inspired textured suede across camel and navy and glossy smooth brown leather, each pair finished with a removable charm made from the shoe's own material. 

A signature rather than a logo.

What stopped the house mid-pour this morning wasn’t just the visual identity created in the campaign but more so the people behind it. 

Ludivine Poiblanc became A.P.C.'s first ever external artistic director just this past May, the first outside creative eye in the brand's history since Jean Touitou founded it in 1987. Her career has been shaped entirely around the discipline of "finding the exact right detail in the exact right frame" and that quality runs through every image Luca Ward shot for this collection. 

Ward has been building editorial work the house has been paying attention to across Port Magazine and AnOther, with an unhurried eye that earns its place here. Makram Bitar handled styling, Caballo Services the set design. A team assembled with the same care that went into the shoes themselves.

The house keeps coming back to work that understands what it is before it asks anything of you. 

This is that.

Creative Direction: Ludivine Poiblanc | Photography: Luca Ward | Video: Salim Boujtita | Styling: Makram Bitar | Set Design: Caballo Services | Casting Direction: Ben Grimes | Production: ACT(S) | Hair: Egon Crivillers | Makeup: Manu Kopp | Manicure: Samia Kassa

Shot of the good stuff.