Beyond E-Commerce: Building the DAKS AW26 Visual Story
E-commerce photography has a very specific job to do.
It needs to show the product clearly, consistently and commercially, giving the customer everything they need to understand the garment online.
But I’ve always felt there is an opportunity to create more around a shoot.
For DAKS AW26, alongside the classic e-commerce imagery, my approach was to build a wider visual story around the collection capturing the details, textures, styling and lifestyle moments that give the clothes a greater sense of character and context.
This season was particularly exciting to capture, with the collection including the fourth DAKS x John Smedley collaboration, alongside the new DAKS x Blackhorse Lane Denim collaboration.
Rather than thinking about the shoot purely as a set of product images, I wanted to use the opportunity to create a broader bank of content that could live beyond the product pages and work across the wider DAKS digital world.
THE PRODUCT
At the heart of the shoot is the e-commerce imagery itself.
Consistency is incredibly important when photographing an entire collection. Lighting, positioning, styling and crops all need to work together so that when the imagery sits online, the customer experiences the collection as one coherent body of work.
Each garment still needs its own moment, though.
The imagery needs to communicate silhouette, proportion, fabric and fit while allowing the individual character of each piece to come through.
THE COLLABORATIONS
AW26 also gave us the opportunity to showcase two collaborations within the collection.
The season marks the fourth DAKS x John Smedley collection, continuing the relationship between two British heritage brands, alongside DAKS x Blackhorse Lane Denim.
For me, collaborations like these create another opportunity for storytelling. Beyond showing the finished pieces, I wanted to capture the details that give each collaboration its identity — the fabrics, construction, branding, textures and styling creating imagery that could help tell those stories across different digital channels.
THE DETAILS
Then there are the details.
These are often the things I naturally find myself drawn to the texture of a fabric, a button, a label, a flash of House Check, the way pieces have been layered or a particular styling detail.
They may be small elements of the collection, but together they help communicate the quality, craftsmanship and personality behind it.
Capturing these moments alongside the main e-commerce imagery gives us another layer of content and another way of telling the story of the clothes.
THE STORY
The final layer is about taking the collection beyond the traditional e-commerce frame.
Lifestyle imagery creates an opportunity to introduce more atmosphere, movement and personality — showing the clothes in a way that feels more natural while still sitting within the visual world of the collection.
These images aren't necessarily there to replace campaign or e-commerce photography. They have a different role.
They create additional moments that can move across social, email, website features and other digital touchpoints, giving us more ways to talk about the collection throughout the season.
ONE SHOOT, MORE CONTENT
That wider thinking is increasingly important to the way I approach a shoot.
If the team, collection and production are already in place, I’m always thinking about what else we can create while we’re there.
What details haven't we shown?
What could become a story?
What would make someone stop while scrolling?
What could become an email, a social post or a piece of editorial content later?
It’s about looking beyond the immediate requirement and making each shoot work harder — creating a considered library of imagery rather than a single set of assets.
For DAKS AW26, that meant bringing together e-commerce, collaborations, detail and lifestyle imagery to create a more complete visual story around the collection.
Because sometimes the smallest details are what bring the bigger story to life.
DAKS AW26
Art Direction · E-Commerce · Content Creation
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