NATURE AFFINITY

Nature Affinity explores the innate human connection to animals, landscape, and the quiet rhythms of the natural world. Created for Orienteer Mapazine Issue 9, the series draws inspiration from classical landscape paintings, compositions where figures, wildlife, and terrain share the same serene, interconnected frame. This visual language becomes a lens through which Kiko Kostadinov Womenswear, designed by Laura & Deanna Fanning, is reinterpreted in open space.

Photographed across the quintessential English countryside, the editorial moves between rolling green hills, working farmland, and pockets of stillness where time feels suspended. The presence of horses, cattle, and other farm animals is not incidental; they echo a long tradition of pastoral paintings, grounding the imagery in something both familiar and quietly symbolic. In this setting, clothing becomes part of a wider environment, shapes responding to wind, texture reacting to light, and silhouettes settling into the surrounding terrain like subjects from a renaissance or romantic-era canvas.

The creative approach sought to merge the technical, sculptural qualities of Kiko Kostadinov Womenswear with the softness and unpredictability of nature. Fabrics intersect with foliage, colour palettes sit against natural tones, and the models are framed with the same compositional intent found in historic landscape studies: balanced, contemplative, and rooted in a relationship with place.

Nature Affinity is ultimately a study of connection, between human and animal, body and land, design and environment. It reflects Orienteer’s ongoing exploration of how contemporary fashion and outdoor spaces can inform each other, offering a narrative that feels both timeless and immediate. By referencing old paintings while grounding the shoot in lived landscape, the series creates a visual dialogue between past and present, craft and wilderness, stillness and movement.