Non fare come i capelli, fa' come noi. Odd Socks Studio. Collaborative Studio Odd Socks Studio wholeheartedly supports the Black Community and any movement fighting for fundamental rights and equality. We are an Italian multicultural collective of young Freelancers who come from a different range of backgrounds and experiences. 7 out of 11 members of the Studio are women. 4 out of 11 members are POC (people of colour) professionals. We speak different languages, we live in different countries, we were born and raised in different contexts, but we all chose to join our creative skills and knowledge to collaborate on making content that celebrates diversity and inclusivity. With our first campaign we decided to focus exactly on that: showing the value of collaboration in different, familiar, day to day contexts. Our whole team worked in the realisation of these videos. While our “Not Collaborative Things” campaign was created before the recent Black Lives Matter protests, our “Don’t be like hair” video acquired a higher significance in light of the current socio-political developments. This specific piece of content is the brainchild of two women of colour (our actress and our copywriter) who, inspired by their own experience, wanted to normalise the presence of Black Natural Hair in the Italian context by portraying it in its beautiful, yet at times difficult to style essence. Caucasian hair is overwhelmingly overrepresented in Italian media, while Black Natural Hair is still considered exotic and mysterious by the majority of mainstream Italian audience. We chose to put forward a piece of content that aims at normalising the portrayal of Afro Hair with a light-hearted and ironic approach, showing its day to day styling challenges as a funny remark on our colleagues’ experience - both our actress and copywriter proudly rock amazing afros. The bottom line is that, when it comes to hair - be it straight, wavy, curly or kinky - we are all on the same boat when our strands don’t want to be collaborative and stay in the exact style we want them to be in. We believe that showing the every-day menial struggles each one of us deals with – such as non-collaborative tendons, a non-collaborative omelette, a non-collaborative sock, and non-collaborative hair – in a light-hearted, honest and open way is extremely important. Because regardless of gender, sexuality, skin colour, religion or political orientation, we are all human beings trying to navigate life, and even in the most mundane tasks, collaboration is what makes us all thrive. For more information about our work and philosophy, visit our website. We are always happy to have honest and open conversations to grow both as a company and as individuals. Feel free to contact us on our social media accounts if you have any questions or would like to have a deeper conversation about the issues we address.
