Olow x Boby

Cannes on a Friday, a tear gas protest the following Tuesday. This is the kind of week Boby finds normal.

A photographer, he wanders between worlds without ever really choosing which one is his. Fashion shows and the street, celebrities and unknowns, chaos and lightness… none of these places truly belong to him, yet he is at ease everywhere. Not because he adapts, but because he approaches people without really knowing what he will bring back from them.

Boby doesn't plan his photos. He goes out, he looks, and he lets the world do its thing. "The best image is the one you didn't see coming." The one that slips between two others, in a sideways glance, in the wrong moment that becomes the right one.

This collaboration was born that way. Mathieu, our co-founder, and Boby have known each other for a long time, long before we talked about anything professional. A friendship first, and it's this friendship that made the rest obvious. At Olow, the best things have always started with a genuine relationship, not a brief, not a casting.

We wanted to do something together. Boby chose his images, and we made two all-over printed tencel shirts, manufactured in Portugal. The Riot is a protest photo turned into a pattern. Chaos has an aesthetic, Boby has always known that.

The Blend resembles his archives: a collection of shots that weren't meant to be together, and that work precisely for that reason.

The best plan is sometimes just to go out and see what's happening.

Writer: Damien Gillet

Boby's take on the collection

"As far as I'm concerned, Blend Energy is a typical week for me. In my work, no two weeks are alike, and every day is different. For example, I might start by doing a celebrity portrait, then a reportage in a factory, then a fashion show, and end Saturday with a protest. In a week, I'll meet lots of people who normally wouldn't cross paths in life. It's a mix of energy between people protesting and luxury fashion shows. It's not at all the same audience, but through my photos, they manage to coincide. In my photos themselves, there's a lot of mixing, for example, between hot and cold, aesthetic and sarcastic; it's never just one thing, there's always a mix."

Police