Bree Street
After moving back to Cape Town after living and working in Dubai I had built up a fascination with destination branding. In Dubai I had the chance to work with a few international branding companies, including Pentagram, Landor and Futurebrand on positioning the city and marketing massive real estate projects including the world’s tallest building, the Burj Khalifa and also Giorgio Armani Hotels. I wanted to start my own little destination brand project and see how far it would go. At that stage we were hanging at the old Caveau and &Union had just opened. I was really into a blog called jjjjound.com which is a simple men’s fashion culture blog and I thought of promoting the Bree Street Brand with the same idea. A simple photographic blog with a lense on the streets premium feel. Over the years I’ve been documenting it’s food, fashion and craft culture and beautiful range of architecture. As a positioning statement I thought the simplest would be to start using the phrase ‘Cape Town’s Hippest Street’.
In 5 years Bree Street has become a hugely successful destination that’s constantly featured in international publications. Wall Street Journal even adapted the line in a recent article ‘Cape Town’s Hippest Block’ .
As a personal project, I’ve begun a destination photo-blog about one of Cape Town’s city streets, Bree Street. Cape Town has many popular street destinations, the Tourists flock to Long Street, and all the skinny-jean indie kids hang out on cape town’s coffee-culture strip, Kloof Street, the original home of Vida Cafe. But Bree Street has a premium subtlety to it, and every few weeks I pack a few lenses in my photobag, and spend an evening wondering the streets breathing in it’s character.
After living and working on ‘Brand Dubai’ in the United Arab Emirates for years, I became fascinated with destination branding. I enjoy seeing brands developed visually. World-wide agences, like Futurebrand, develop huge destination brands and massive campaigns aired on CNN. Truly Greece. Malaysia truly Asia. 100 PURE New Zealand. I wanted to develop a new destination in Cape Town that hasn’t had much attention, and perhaps gone unnoticed at times. I spend a lot of time on this street, whether it’s a few evening glasses of wine at caveau or a quick lunch in the deli, a wednesday night catch-up beer with mates at &Union, or a quick coffee meeting at Jardine Bakery. I take shots of shoes, beers, coffee, moments of people walking and enjoying the street, cool cars, architecture, business interiors, street detailing, trying to document the many added subtleties that give a street it’s character.
