Creativity Is Grown, Not Generated

Craft, AI, Supersized Nature and Luxury

The Auras Campaign, ‘To Flourish’, House of Hackney

Last month, on a cold early Spring morning in Cornwall, my daughter Lila and I were to be found in the garden doing the annual ritual of stick collecting - a clearing of the detritus left behind by Winter storms, so that the daffodils can begin to push through the earth. It’s generally a bit of a mundane, back-breaking job (and warrants pocket money), but this year, we filled our wheelbarrows with added gusto because we weren’t just stick collecting - we were gathering the building blocks of a special shoot we were creating. This was the beginning of the materials needed for a supersized bird’s nest that would later sit in a campaign around the concept of hyper Nature called ‘The Auras’.

Little did we know, as we gathered those sticks, that the supersized bird metaphor was about to become the protagonist in another luxury brand’s campaign, launching just a couple of weeks before ours. A coincidence, perhaps, but not entirely surprising. Ideas often arrive in the cultural landscape at the same time, having absorbed and reflected the zeitgeist. So, it isn’t particularly surprising that, at this moment in time, two luxury brands - very different in size - both turned to Nature, and both chose to make it supersized.

The Auras Campaign, ‘To Nurture’, House of Hackney

Normally, we would be thrilled with the serendipity. Because on the rare occasions that Nature appears not as a backdrop but as the protagonist - in art, in fashion, in storytelling - it means we are bringing Mother Nature back into the conversation, back into the cultural imagination, back into the place she has always belonged. That was the idea behind our campaign: to platform Nature not as decoration, but as something powerful, sentient and awe-inspiring.

And this isn’t a time for claiming ideas ownership.

If we are to truly change the paradigm, we need more brands, more artists, more writers and more companies helping to reposition Nature in the human story - not just as a resource, but as Source.

As a brand that has Mother Nature as our legal director, we were thrilled to see British perfumer Ffern’s recent campaign inviting people to listen to the voice of Mother Nature – an exquisitely beautiful and thought-provoking example of how brands can use creativity to shift perception, not just sell products. This is the powerful role that culture, beauty and storytelling can play.

But while the idea of supersized Nature appeared in both campaigns, the way the images were made - and what that means - could not have been more different. Because the two companies behind these campaigns operate at completely different scales, with completely different resources, and completely different financial realities.

Prada is a publicly listed global luxury group with annual revenues in the billions and significant profits, operating at a scale most independent brands can barely imagine. House of Hackney, by contrast, is an independent British SME, operating at a completely different scale, with a fraction of the turnover and a fraction of the profit, and far less room for error when it comes to how money is spent. And yet, when faced with the same technological moment - the same tools, the same possibilities, the same industry pressures - we made completely different choices. One of us chose to use AI to generate a campaign. The other - with far less disposable income - chose to employ an entire ecosystem of people to create it by hand.

Jordon Wolfson for Prada Spring/ Summer 2026

Because every creative decision we make is also an economic decision, and every economic decision is a decision about who and what we value. Who gets employed. Which skills survive. Which industries survive. The kind of world we are building, even when we think we are just making pictures.

Every time a company chooses AI over people, it is deciding about where money flows.

Away from photographers, set builders, prop makers, stylists, retouchers, studios, freelancers and workshops - and towards software, servers and tech companies. Luxury, of all industries, has historically been one of the great patrons of human craft. From the leather workers of Italy to the silk weavers of Lyon (and Suffolk), from embroiderers and pattern cutters to printers, photographers, set designers and artisans -luxury has always been an ecosystem that sustains extraordinary human skill.

Prada was founded in 1913 as a leather goods workshop in Milan, built on craftsmanship, material knowledge, and the extraordinary Italian tradition of making things well, slowly, and by hand. House of Hackney, though much younger at just fifteen years old, was also built on craft - founded as a rebellion against the prevalence of the high street back in 2010, with a mission to make beautiful products that would last, working with generational factories and makers whose skills had been passed down over decades, supporting local communities and keeping traditional crafts alive. From hand-painted designs to traditional weaving, printing and making, the business was built on a deep belief that pattern, colour and material have the power to connect people back to the natural world.

Both brands, in very different ways, were built not just on design, but on making, on materials and on the human hand.

What makes this moment so interesting, then, is that we are not comparing a craft brand with a technology company, or a heritage house with a digital start-up. We are comparing two luxury brands, both with craftsmanship in their DNA, both built on materiality and the human hand, both telling stories about beauty, culture and creativity - and yet, when faced with the same technological moment, we made very different choices about how that creativity would be brought into the world. For me the question that arises is not simply whether AI is good or bad, because like most powerful tools, it is not a black-and-white answer.

The deeper question is what is luxury for?

Is it simply to produce high-margin campaigns and products as efficiently as possible? Or is it to sustain the culture, craft, skills and beauty that justify its existence in the first place?

Because if luxury stops employing the very people whose skills created luxury in the first place, it begins to undermine the very story it is selling.

A small but important caveat here, because this is not a story of purity, nor is it a story of rejection. We did use AI in the early stages of the creation of the campaign, as a visualisation tool to help our set builder and prop maker understand the scale and feeling we were trying to achieve. But every set was then built by hand. Every supersized element of Nature was physically made, shaped, painted, constructed by human hands (with the exception of the very realistic cloud, which would have stretched our physics a little too far, and so that was added later in retouching).

But our conscience is clear about that decision and distinction. Because this, I believe, is where AI can find its most positive role:

AI can enhance human creativity, but it should not replace human creativity.

AI can support human work, but it should not take away human work, and our inherent human gifts and talents.

The reaction to the Prada campaign was interesting. Many felt instinctively that AI and luxury were somehow incompatible. Not because the images weren’t beautiful - they were. But because luxury has always been shorthand for human excellence: human hands, human time, human mastery.

We witnessed a similar reaction when Morris & Co., in the early throes of AI excitement, made the baffling choice of creating a campaign using AI. The backlash from Morris enthusiasts was immediate and emotional, because it was so contrary to the founding ethos of the original Morris & Co. William Morris, after all, was foundational to the Arts and Crafts movement - a movement that emerged as a direct response to the mechanisation of labour, to the loss of craft and dignity in labour, to the separation of humans from the act of making. His entire life’s work was a defence of the human hand, of beauty in everyday objects, of the idea that the things we live with should be made with care, by people who are valued. So, when a brand built on his work used artificial intelligence to generate campaigns in his name it contradicted the very philosophy the brand was built upon.

And I think this is why the conversation around AI and luxury feels so emotionally charged. Because luxury is not just about aesthetics. It is about values, about time and skill, about human effort made visible. When we remove the human from luxury, we are not just changing the process. We are changing the meaning.

The Aura images are not just images. They are the result of years of skill, and of many hands and many imaginations working together. Set builders, scenic painters, prop makers, stylists, photographers, producers, retouchers, assistants - a whole creative ecosystem of real people using their gifts to make real things. And like all ecosystems, if you remove too many parts, the system begins to weaken, and eventually, it begins to collapse.

In each image, the Aura contains an icon from the natural world - a small reminder that Nature, as our design muse, sits at the centre of everything we create, but is also our collaborator, our teacher and, in many ways, our organisational blueprint.

Nature shows us that creativity is not instant but organic - perfectly imperfect, experimental, alive. It requires time, patience, skill and care.

The Auras Campaign, ‘To Root’, House of Hackney

We couldn’t create a campaign about the beauty, power and primacy of Nature and then remove the human from the act of creating it. Because we are Nature. And when we make things with our hands, using materials from the earth, in collaboration with other humans, that too is a natural process.

If Nature is the source of all value, then value should flow back to living systems - not just to machines. And living systems include people: their skills, their creativity, their livelihoods, their ability to make meaning and beauty with their hands. So, when we chose to make this shoot by hand, we were not just making an aesthetic decision. We were making an economic decision. And we were making a values decision.

I hope you can feel that these images are human-made. That the nest was built from sticks gathered during our Spring garden clean-up. That each paper rose and painted acorn was shaped slowly by prop stylist Phoebe’s hands over many days in her studio. That Reuben built new sets from the wood of old sets, like the conscientious carpenter that he is, reducing waste and carrying the past into the present. That Chris, our photographer and his assistant Jack, took the time on every shot, drawing on years of mastery with light to create something that was clearly human made.

Behind the scenes of House of Hackney's The Auras campaign

This shoot may have impacted our bottom line during a tough economy, but it created value in ways that are harder to measure. It paid people’s rents. It sustained craft. It brought together a living, breathing ecosystem of collaboration, joy and shared purpose - each of us contributing our very human gifts.

This is not about being anti-technology. The question is no longer whether we can use AI, but how, why and when we use it. Because what is at stake is not just how images are made, but what kind of world we are choosing to build. One that is fast, cheap and synthetic? Or one that is skilled, human, collaborative and regenerative? When we choose “crafted by people”, we are choosing to keep our creative industries - and the ecosystems that support them - alive.

The Auras Campaign, ‘To Dream’, House of Hackney

The Aura series is part of a wider conversation we are having as a company about technology, creativity and responsibility. In May, we will publish our AI Responsibility Charter - a commitment outlining how we will use AI responsibly and ethically, in a way that protects human creativity, supports meaningful employment, and remains aligned with our mission to work in service of Nature, Craft and future generations.

Because what we choose to make, and how we choose to make it, shapes the world we live in.

The Auras Campaign, ‘To Nourish’, House of Hackney

Thank you to all who helped bring The Auras to life.

Concept: Mother Nature

Creative Direction: Frieda Gormley

Photography: Christopher Horwood

Photography Assistant: Jack Burgess

Set Build: Reuben Dartrell

Scenic Painting: Emma Stevens

Prop Build: Phoebe McElhatton

Post Production: Retouch and Print

Stylist: Jordon Britton

Production and Logistics: House of Hackney Dream Team