Beyond the Grid Vol. 07 - Barbara Palvin, Bikinis, and a Gorilla Suit

Before Barbara Palvin became a Victoria’s Secret Angel, and long before I made the move to the US, I worked for a surf brand, and we had the wild idea to put her in a gorilla suit.

Blue Steel meets Banana Peel - Barbara can drop this look whenever she wants.

It was 2013. I was working for Mambo, the proudly irreverent Australian surf label known for its loud shirts, anarchic energy, and a history of saying whatever it wanted, about politics, war, religion, and just about anyone. The brand had built its name on unapologetically masculine humour and a refusal to take anything (especially itself) too seriously.

That summer, we were running the Mambo Goddess campaign, the women’s line that had been around for years but was getting a fresh push. We cast Ashley Hart and Barbara Palvin as the faces of the campaign, two women with very different energies, but both equally unforgettable.

Barbara wasn’t famous-famous yet, but she was close. She had that energy, the kind of face you remembered, and the kind of charisma you couldn’t really direct. Lucky for us, she was also completely up for whatever weird ideas we threw at her.

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Fashion? Marketing? Performance art? Hard to say. But it happened.

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Why a Gorilla?
To tie all of our summer campaigns and activations together, we came up with a concept that was part lo-fi mascot, part red herring, and 100% chaos: a man in a gorilla suit photographed all over Australia doing regular things, skating beachside paths, walking someone’s dog, digging the Mambo Jaguar out of the West Australian dirt.

We treated the gorilla like our new “ambassador.” We didn’t explain it. Just started dropping these images on our social feeds with the hashtag #goingbananaz.

Part mascot, part mystery—our gorilla ambassador took the campaign to every corner of the Aussie coast.

Some people thought it was a celebrity collab. Others guessed a surfer or DJ. No one expected Barbara Palvin in a bikini. That was a pretty good punchline.

The Shoot
The shoot itself was equal parts sunburn and spontaneity. We shot it on Venice Beach in LA and kicked things off with Barbara in the gorilla suit. Ashley peeled it off her, like she was peeling a banana, to reveal our new ambassador.

Ashley Hart, mid-peel, revealing Barbara Palvin beneath the chaos.

Barbara had no questions. No complaints. Just slipped it on like it was part of the wardrobe pull.

We shot her in the suit and in swimwear. Sometimes both. The result was surreal, funny, and weirdly fashion-forward. The kind of thing that would probably get watered down by brand guidelines now.

Back then, we just ran with it.

Looking Back
It’s easy for me to romanticize this era in my life, but honestly? It was kind of magic. I’ve been chasing that feeling in my career ever since I left Australia.

The campaign was nonsense, but it was our nonsense. It didn’t rely on polish. It relied on people buying into the absurdity. And they did.

We had a hashtag before hashtags really meant anything. We had a rising supermodel in a gorilla suit. And we had a creative brief that basically read: Don’t let the truth get in the way of a good story.

Below are some of my images. These ones never really made it to Instagram.

But that’s the point.

This is what it looked like when we were still figuring it out.

This was the kind of campaign you could only make when no one was asking for approvals. Pure fun, full chaos.

No gorillas were harmed in the making of this campaign.

Till next week.
Benny

Barbara and I dancing post-shoot. A blurry little easter egg from a night that didn’t make the grid—but stayed with me..