There’s something to be said for an honest ad campaign. Band of Outsiders’ designer and founder Scott Sternberg tries to advertise his clothing as realistically as possible—which is why he personally photographed Williams, then 27, with a vintage Polaroid camera for her first spots for the brand in 2008. “There [wasn’t] hair and makeup . . . no lights or anything,” Sternberg said at the time, and that natural photo shoot fit his ideology and the handmade feel of the clothing.
“I don’t make runway clothes,” he told WWD. “These are clothes you wear on the street, so I’m just super-uncomfortable with it. It puts it in totally the wrong context — I want to do something closer to where the clothes are, and let people actually touch and feel them as opposed to seeing them on a 14-year-old anorexic model.”
Williams posed for a second campaign in February 2012.