Les Benjamins Spring Summer 2021 Campaign “Silk Road Services”

This season, Bünyamin Aydin, founder and creative director of Les Benjamins, takes urban clothing codes from the streetwear culture and re-contextualizes them in a multicultural and historical setting. 

Serving as the main source of inspiration for the season, the silk road is represented in both abstract and tangible senses and repurposed into a distinctly contemporary vision. In this context, the collection's theme evolves around deconstructed hybrids of sportswear and traditional tailoring archetypes in order to create new proportion and function. 

Sticking to natural tonal colorways, the collection features sandy and golden hues informed by the desert and sea trade routes of the silk road that are paired with tangerine, terra cotta, henna red, and oceanic shades of blue and purple. 

“The Silk Road was historically critical for culture and trade, not only the trade of goods but ideas as well,” explains Aydin. Speaking on key showpieces for the season, he notes “My personal favorite are the Camel Utility Pants featuring Neil Raitt's exclusive print.”


Aydin commissioned British artist Neil Raitt to create two exclusive artworks inspired by the silk road, to reflect the corresponding desert theme oceanic theme. Each artwork was scanned to create dual seasonal prints, which can be seen throughout the collection containing silk pieces thoroughly rooted in contemporary fits. 

“For this collection, I was inspired by the caravans that would carry goods along with this vast network. I enjoyed inventing the camels in painted form, and imagining the kind of goods they would be carrying, juxtaposing notions of luxury and labor,” adds Raitt. “My paintings weave together different landscapes, with repeating mountains and map-like compositions.”

To express his affinity for real garments made for real people, Bünyamin Aydin has once again confronted the richness of street-culture with traditional heritage and has therewith created a multi-ethnic collection that is thoroughly rooted in contemporary fits.

Discover more about the new collection at lesbenjamins.com