Charlie Constantinou

This collaboration between Charlie Constantinou and Demon Footwear for Orienteer Mapazine brings together two distinct but naturally aligned design languages: Demon’s sculptural, exaggerated footwear silhouettes and Charlie’s experimental, dye-driven textile world. Shot across pockets of brutalist architecture in London, the editorial positions colour, form and materiality against a backdrop of washed-out concrete, grey skies and the muted monotones of the city in winter.

The architectural setting is not incidental it acts as a counterweight to the expressive nature of the garments and shoes. Brutalist structures, with their heavy surfaces and geometric severity, amplify the volume and shape of Demon’s footwear. Their sculptural soles and contoured uppers become near-architectural objects themselves, grounding the models within the rigid lines of the environment. Each frame stages a conversation between body, garment, shoe and structure.

Charlie’s garments introduce a chromatic pulse to this world. Using his signature dye techniques gradients, saturation shifts, rich purples and blues the clothing brings an unexpected softness to the architectural hard edges. The palette cuts sharply against the monochrome surroundings, allowing the garments to hover between craft and futurism, each look appearing almost electric against the grey.

Movement further enhances this tension. Set within car parks, underpasses and concrete terraces, the models are photographed mid-motion, floating, stepping, twisting, their bodies lending a sense of lightness to the heavy structures around them. The dyed fabrics exaggerate this movement, catching light in unexpected ways, while Demon’s footwear grounds each gesture with weight and presence.

Grey skies overhead heighten the atmosphere: a flat, diffused light that strips the environment of decorative detail and focuses attention on silhouettes. In this stripped-back urban stage, colour becomes a protagonist and form becomes narrative. The editorial becomes a study in contrast, the starkness of brutalism against the vibrancy of dyed textiles; the weight of architecture against the sculptural exaggeration of footwear; the monotone city against the expressive world of the designers.

At its core, this project reflects a shared philosophy between Charlie Constantinou and Demon Footwear: a pursuit of form that challenges convention, and a belief that clothing and footwear should communicate as much through shape and movement as through material. For Orienteer, the collaboration captures a distinctly urban energy, a visual exploration of how design interacts with city texture, structure and sky.

The result is a series of images that feel both cinematic and grounded, abstract yet functional. It is an editorial where the city becomes sculpture, and the garments and footwear become extensions of that architecture, expressive, structural, and deeply present within the frame.