Italian luxury brand Etro returns to its 1968 founding roots with a magical carpet ride of bohemian prints, easy shapes, and tribal jewelry for its Spring 2020 campaign.

Photographer Cass Bird captures the bohemian spirit of an earlier time in the brand’s #WeAre AllNomads campaign featuring Abby Champion, Alton Mason, Fei Fei Sun, James Turlington, Karen Elson, Lauren Hutton, Lexi Boling, Mark Vanderloo and Ugbad Abdi.

The modern images inspired reflections of the past. A spirit of global and rebellious optimism swept the world when Etro was founded. The march of civil rights and the demise of colonialism inspired a desire to connect with the open seas and travel to distant lands and new cultures.

As immigrants traveled to New York harbor in large numbers after the signing of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, adventurous American spirits sailed out of and over New York harbor. Previously isolated Americans moved into the global collective spirit — not only as affluent Americans of leisure on cruise ships and Pan Am jets from JFK, but also as excited young people in the Peace Corps. Full of optimism and sincerity — inspired greatly by the too-short, bullet-ridden lives of Martin Luther King, Bobby Kennedy and Jack Kennedy.

The spirit of Cassius Clay transitioning to Muhammad Ali inspired young Americans headed to destinations across the world and, most often, into a newly-independent, young nation in Africa. Deeply affected by the thousands of Americans dying in Vietnam, these young liberals sought to bring their knowledge and willingness to use every basic skill — and not napalm — to foreign soil.

Were light-skinned people selfishly naive in the moment? Yes. Tragically so. Still, the efforts were magical, eye-opening and well-intentioned in more cases than they were not.

The Spring 2020 Etro campaign #WeAre AllNomads captures this global spirit, the throwing off of norms and a desire to experience humanity at its fullest.

In this moment when the weight of the planet’s future is on our collective shoulders, Etro seeks to infuse us with humanity’s collective creative spirit. Centering the campaign in New York harbor is a reminder that darkness is not in America’s DNA. We are a hopeful, enterprising nation of immigrants. It’s in this moment that New York — and America’s greatness — must rise again, throwing off a monstrous set of Trumpian pseudo-ideals that do not represent our collective American humanity at its best.

Courtesy of Etro. “Here I am taking a break in my office in Milan to scratch Milo, my Parson Russell terrier. He’s my third child, after my two sons. I’m wearing my usual uniform of embroidered Etro jeans and a black silk button-down.” Veronica Etro in New York Times Aug. 22, 2019.

We can probably assume that Etro’s designer Veronica Etro, daughter of founder Gimmo Etro, didn’t intend for AOC to so politicize her Spring 2020 ad campaign. Yet, I cannot resist because the entire team has captured an infectious spirit of optimism that is so needed at this moment in time.

For more about Veronica Etro, read the New York Times’ Lindsay Talbot’ A Designer Who Views the World as a Collage. From me, let me say to Veronica and the campaign team “thank you, thank you, thank you.” ~ Anne