30Y X from costumes to a recycling merch collection

The four music videos created for 30Y’s X album are part of a larger dramaturgical whole: the videos are interconnected and together form a short film. Their visual worlds therefore follow a unified system. The characters, costumes, props and visual motifs reappear throughout the videos, making each detail part of a larger story.

From this cohesive visual concept came the idea to make the actual costumes used in the music videos the foundation of a merch collection. This is how the 30Y X Recycling Merch Collection was born. The pieces were inspired not only by the visual world of the videos, but also directly by the songs on the X album.

Each piece in the collection is unique and one of a kind. The garments were hand-painted, sewn, altered and embroidered – in many cases continuing to work with the very costumes that had been used during the filming. The goal was not to create a conventional concert merch line, but a wearable collection that carries both the atmosphere of the music videos and the spirit of the X album.

The approximately 100-piece collection was available to fans at the Kobuci Garden dates of 30Y’s X album release concert series, and later became available at Jajcica Vintage as well.

The photoshoot originally started out as a simple costume fitting. The pieces were still unfinished at the time, with final adjustments and fittings taking place. The fitting eventually turned into a spontaneous, quick photoshoot. Rather than creating perfectly styled campaign images, we wanted to capture the raw, in-between moment of the garments coming to life.

These images therefore document not only the finished collection, but also the process through which the costumes of the 30Y X music videos and the ideas inspired by the album’s songs transformed into a new, wearable story.

Photo: Diána Kis-Schmidhoffer

Models: Eszter Murányi, László Kovács

Make-up: Erika Tóth