Just when you thought you’d nailed down Public School, all streetwear-inspired and downtown cool, designers Maxwell Osborne and Dao-Yi Chow throw something unexpected at you. For their Fall campaign, that twist is a fully realized, straight from the ’90s office park setting, complete with vintage Apple desktops, matte gray file cabinets, and manila file folders galore. That’s right, Public School’s muses are clocking in from nine to five this season.
“Christopher Simmonds, who was the creative director for the campaign, came up with the idea to capture a ’90s nuance through this office setting, which we all loved,” explained Chow of the decision to leave the streets behind and head to work. And with an early-’90s, voguing inspiration for the clothes, the nostalgic scenery harkens back to that time without hitting the reference on the head. Even so, the imagery isn’t meant to be a break from the vernacular Osborne and Chow have established. “I guess, subconsciously, we maybe try to get away from what people may think about what Public School is,” Osborne said, admitting that to many that means streetwear. “For us, [the campaign] didn’t feel like a far off shot. It’s pretty spot-on to what Public School is aesthetically; it’s not something that we consciously chose to try to augment somebody’s perception of what public School is.”
