This month’s takeaways: nostalgia will always work, sex still sells, and details get noticed.

The Creative Breather is your monthly pause button—a quick inhale of scroll-stopping work worth saving to your mood board. Want more references to spark ideas? Subscribe to The Creative Breather. Need some systematic creative healing? Book a demo. Air’s hosting it’s inaugural summit for creatives this week, and it was semi inspired by this.

Here's what caught my eye in September:

The house revived its 1967 “Diorling” line for children, reimagined by Cordelia de Castellane as a whimsical back-to-school collection. Tartan checks, Prince of Wales motifs, countryside tailoring meet playground energy. The hero ad, directed by Java Jacobs, feels like you’re watching Cher’s closet scene in Clueless for the first time, or flipping to the back page of Teen Vogue to see this inside a teen nepobaby’s bedroom. Excited to see how more Gen Alpha product is marketed to millennial parents.

Above Us, Steorra Eau de Parfum, conceived by long-time collaborator Céline Barel, was born of an abstract trio of inspirations: a poem by Mayuzumi Madoka entitled “Shooting Star,” a photograph of the night sky and the shifting hues of fossilized resin. Building the cultural and experiential mood board for something like this is a cool content opportunity, and the Aesop team embraced it. The campaign content helps connect the actual product inspirations to scent by featuring synaesthete, Jack Coulter, describing how he experiences the smell as sound, touch, and color. Smart translation tool - props to whoever pitched this storytelling bit!

To debut AGZ, its new sleep-focused supplement, AG1 spoofed a ‘call for hot singles’ hotline. Think velvet-voiced operators, neon-glow visuals, and copy like “hot and steamy science.” Remember the restless feeling you got staying up all night watching infomercials? So does AG1’s creative team. They didn’t miss any details with this - there’s even a digital dialer with product explainers as pre-recorded responses to FAQ’s like a good old 1-1800 experience, “Introducing the first all-night hotline designed to turn you off. It’s simple: dial in, press a button, and hear the sweet science behind AGZ whispered directly in your ear.” It’s parody with a purpose: repositioning wellness rituals as something you actually look forward to.

Maude launched a campaign called “for going and coming,” a vintage air travel inspired campaign, calling out “First departure 9/16 — sign up for early boarding.” The look + feel leans into the ritual of transit, of anticipation: boarding passes, departure boards, the liminal between places. Plus, apparently we’re all thinking about sex on vacation. It’s not just about portability or convenience — although those are in the mix — it’s about staying honest about sexual desire and what inspires it.

Paloma Wool’s AW25 campaign is rooted in the designer’s daily life: her children being born and growing up, home and work blending, the boundaries blurring. The imagery shows the texture of motherhood: the casual chaos, small moments, real bodies, real kids. The creative direction (Carlotta Guerrero) and styling (Emilie Kareh) all lean into something unfiltered but beautiful. It doesn’t glamorize the idea of “motherhood as perfect,” but shows its emotional richness. Their customers loved it - read the comments from cool moms who felt seen.

Want more inspo and creative ephemera? We've got 10 more campaigns in our monthly moodboard.

You don’t need new ideas to win—you just need to pick the right cultural ephemera to center your campaign in. Whether it’s your brand’s own historical content archive or your customer’s cultural archive, it’s having the archive that matters. If it doesn’t exist yet, now’s as good of a time as ever to start collecting it somewhere that your whole team can use as source material for their next great campaign idea.

See you online,

Lou

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