This year, in the lead-up to our 15th birthday at StudioXAG, we’re catching up with clients, collaborators and friends in our industry –  some of the faces behind the boldest spaces and brand experiences in the world’s best shopping destinations.

Next up in the series, StudioXAG co-founder and creative director Gemma Ruse chats with Jason Lowdon, senior creative director at Lululemon and long-time collaborator of StudioXAG. We explore building a framework for a brand’s creative direction, how brands can stay relevant and what the future of retail experience holds.

Favourite scent: Probably something with sandalwood in it

Favourite taste: Coffee

Favourite texture: Wood

Favourite sound: The wind blowing through palm trees

Favourite colour: Green

Gemma Ruse: I would love to have a brief synopsis of your career, what you’re doing now and how you got there.

Jason Lowdon: So I first went to drama school, which is when I started working in retail. My first job was in Diesel and there was this stylist called Carloyn Banks that used to come into the store all the time. She’d always tell me about the projects she was working on and I started to help her which led to me assisting her and then eventually she would give me my own jobs and tell people about me. So, I started as a stylist in Scotland and then moved to London because that’s where most of the jobs were. Through this I began to work as an in-store Stylist within retail.

Before I knew it, I was opening stores and I was managing people which is not what I wanted to do. So, I took a career break and when I came back, Diesel was trying to get me to work with them again. At that point I told them I needed to do something more creative because I felt I couldn’t not have a creative role. So, I was introduced to Alice Sheriff, Xavier (StudioXAG’s co-founder)’s sister!

That’s when I started doing visual merchandising, that led to windows and events and that led to moving through different brands within visual direction. After Diesel, I freelanced for a little while and then I went to Topshop and started doing global windows and in-store experiences, which is where we did a lot of our work together.

Then when I went to Karen Millen, that’s when I started doing content creation and getting involved in brand campaigns. From there, I went to Napapijri and at that point I was really the creative director, which was the first brand that I was at the helm of and that was probably my favourite job.

Some really cool things happened after that as well. I became the senior director of global brand and creative for Dickies, consulting creative director for H&M and created H&M Move and now I head up global brand creative for lululemon.

Gemma Ruse: A very varied and illustrious career. Of course, with the icon that is Alice Sheriff kicking it all off, she is fundamental to a few of our working relationships.

Jason Lowdon: Exactly, of course we worked together before XAG as well – I remember you guys doing your own thing and working with you both separately in the showrooms before everything came together.

Gemma Ruse: Yes, Xav and I both had different companies for a very short space of time before we realised that neither of us could quite get it right without the other. You’ve really been there since before the beginning.

Gemma Ruse: Let’s expand a bit on the XAG – Jason Lowdon history. What has been your favourite collaboration with us? Are there any notable projects that you’d like to call out and give a bit of colour to?

Jason Lowdon: There’s probably loads, and I know that I’m gonna forget about one, that’s probably really important. Our work for H&M Move was an interesting one. What was really exciting about that was bringing you guys into just a really interesting journey that I was going through at the time. I had never built a brand from the bottom up and so It was really amazing to do that and to bring you guys in as a trusted partner for that.

H&M Move was really fun because it was really about bringing in a lot of the playful elements to sport, but doing it in a very highly stylised fashion way and I love the humour that you brought to it.

It was really about democratising sport and because the brand’s tagline was However you move. It was about deciding how you want to bring movement into your daily practice, and you really encapsulated that in the windows, that kind of playfulness. The option to not take it too seriously or do take it too seriously, however you like. That was a really special moment.

One of the reasons that I’ve always loved working with you is I feel like we all very quickly got to know what we love and so it is always very easy. Our partnership just flowed and I think that’s probably why the projects were so amazing. It just always worked. I used to always describe you guys as having incredible taste and knowing exactly what I liked, so I didn’t have to think about it so much.

Gemma Ruse: Thank you. We had a lot of fun on H&M Move because it was all there in the content that you created, that narrative of everyday movement, bringing some humour and making it really accessible and inclusive. We really enjoyed riffing on which everyday movement moments we could bring to life in playful ways. I think my favourite might be the surfboards contrasted with the ironing board, just so visually strong, and then we had the punch bags and the piñata, which was so much fun.

Jason Lowdon: Yes, I loved the piñata one, that was so good.

Gemma Ruse: Out of all of the projects that you worked on over your career, what would you say is the most successful and why?

Jason Lowdon: It depends how you measure success. There are ones that gained notoriety such as the Napapijri pop-up we worked on together in Shoreditch. That wasn’t a commercial project, but a brand project, which is very unique and those things don’t really happen so much anymore because it wasn’t really about making money. It was about creating space for people, that’s what was so incredible about it.

That sticks out to me as a successful project because it was something that put the brand on the map, in a really cool way and in a really cool place. But it also sticks out for the crazy stuff that we did for it – I remember there being this fake construction hoarding on the outside of the building that we used to blow up the campaign imagery. It really set the trend on that street because now it’s all huge graphics everywhere.

I also remember the music artist J Cole’s team contacting us because he wanted to use a picture of the front of the store as the cover for one of his singles and I was just like, wow, this is cool, this is happening.

There was also the Meadham Kirchhoff explosion for the Queen’s Jubilee that happened that weekend with the dancers on top of the cake. It was just next level. What were we doing? It was just this crazy explosion of creativity that was so otherworldly.

We won the FRAME award for the Napapijri Shoreditch pop-up store and WGSN covered the Napapijri Nowhere windows and those things stick out for me a lot.

Gemma Ruse: Yes, I hear you – that Shoreditch pop-up is an iconic one for us as well. The creative and the impact that it made – and then the cultural connection that happened as a result of it.  Crucially you then had an increase in brand awareness, and you had various stats and figures that proved that that project was really successful.

For us, the question of how you measure success is something we’re challenged with on a daily basis and is such an important question to ask at the outset of any project.

Gemma Ruse: Moving on to the present. What is the most inspiring or innovative project that you’ve worked on lately that you can tell me about?

Jason Lowdon: When I came to lululemon, I created a global creative direction framework for how the brand comes together from a creative direction point of view and last week I did a shoot to populate that framework. It was a test shoot, which won’t ever be used anywhere, but it’s purpose is to demonstrate how we show up in still and moving image as well as exploring and testing art direction for categories like Run, Train, training for sport and Yoga.. Everything from an elevated version of what we already do to just throwing some wild cards in there from a styling and casting perspective. I shot it with Tom Johnson, who is an iconic photographer. Loads of energy, kind of like the Tasmanian devil, doesn’t stop. That was a really fun week.

Gemma Ruse: Sounds fun! That idea of codifying the creative direction for a brand is so important, it’s interesting to hear you talk about creating this framework of content that’s never going to be seen externally. What impact are you hoping to have with that piece of work?

Jason Lowdon: A lot of things. One is modernising the brand, adding a level of modernity, adding a level of taste. Lululemon never really did marketing until about four years ago, so it was always very localised, very store-led and wherever you were, you could kind of do whatever you want. That was really cute in a way, but when you become a global brand, you need to have a unified image. There should of course be regional nuances, but there has to be a direction and vision so my hope is that it gives the brand the direction it needs to continue the growth in the future.

Gemma Ruse: Great, thank you. That looking forward and future-proofing is such a key part of the job of a Creative Director right? In your opinion, what key challenges are we facing as an industry? Where can you see opportunities to evolve in the coming years?

Jason Lowdon: What are we not facing? I think a lot of the conversations that I’m having with people in my industry and from speaking from inside a brand, it’s always about how do you stay relevant and what are you doing to become relevant? What are you doing to be the brand that people talk about and that people want and desire. But then, when I speak to other people within the industry, we keep talking about what’s going to be those drivers, even from a sustainability perspective.

I love that there’s partners like yourselves that are B Corp. I think that’s very important. I think it’s a huge credit to you guys that you decided to do that within your industry and that it is something that you deeply cared about and that was the reason for doing it rather than anything else.

For me, I think the challenge that we’re facing is understanding what’s going to be important and how can you be relevant to that? It’s something that I don’t have the answer to because a lot of brands became purpose-led brands and they get involved in purpose-led activities, but some brands do it for the sake of doing it. Everybody’s kind of doing it now, so it’s like what’s the next step? I’m really interested in what’s next.

Gemma Ruse: Yeah, we’re feeling that with B Corp. We’re noticing lots of other agencies becoming B Corp, which is fantastic and we support it, but that feels like a fundamental now and good housekeeping. Where can we go from here to continue to improve and evolve and push ourselves – and also the industry – forward in a way that is purposeful and brings everyone on that journey? It’s a big question. I don’t know yet what’s next, but I am excited to make some space to figure that out soon.

Gemma Ruse: Thinking about the future, where do you see retail or brand experience in 15 years from now?

Jason Lowdon: It’s really sad because what comes into my brain is that I think the future will be more divided. I think the more localised processes and brands will become more successful, because I think globalisation doesn’t work and hasn’t been serving us.

Things will be more localised, probably because that will be the next part of things being a bit more sustainable. But then I still expect that there’ll be hubs where things will become this merge of virtual and in-person; venues that you can go to for experience that will convert you to purchasing things, but it will all merge into some kind of lifestyle experience. I like to think things will become more localised and artisanal again. I think we’re going to crave this in some ways.

Gemma Ruse: I can definitely see there could be a backlash against the globalised uniformity of everything and I agree about the experience piece. I wonder if brands will move even more in that direction, still selling products, but it won’t be that you’re going to a store to buy a bag, you might buy a bag as a result of this really fun time that you’ve had in this space, having a meal, watching a gig, doing everything in a branded universe, but the product becomes the souvenir or the byproduct of the experience. Or maybe you’ll even subscribe to a brand in a different way. That economy is growing massively, I wonder when we’ll see more retailers start to leverage that.

Jason Lowdon: Yeah, I mean, that’s the whole thing. Brands need to keep growing, but how are they going to keep evolving? What I’ve noticed, living here in LA, is that people shop very differently and people do different things when shopping because it’s kind of habitual and it’s very cultural to go to the mall here. You go to the mall and everything’s there, especially the more modern ones, it’s more of a holistic experience.

Gemma Ruse: Yes, I know what you mean. I wonder if we will start to see more of that culture emerge in the UK as we continue to value experience over purchase..

To wrap things up, I’d like to leave things on an inspiring end – I’d love to know – what was the last thing you saw or experienced that stopped you in your tracks?

Jason Lowdon: The first thing that comes to mind was an exhibition actually, an opening for the photographer, Robbie Lawrence at the Webber gallery in DTLA. It was really inspiring and really made me travel. It’s really beautiful, there is a sensibility and a vision about his work that was just really lovely to experience.

Gemma Ruse: I will have to check out their work! Thank you for joining me and sharing some of your stories and insights with us!