Captured by Vincent van de Wijngaard, the brand’s new photo book unfolds in a wide open plain outside Marrakech, dotted with hot air balloons
Zomer, who take their name from the Dutch word for summer, are known for their designs that wear like breathing, ever-bright climates rather than seasonal statements. So, for Spring/Summer 2026, it felt only natural that founders Danial Aitouganov and Imruh Asha would follow that feeling, carrying it into the rising light of the Moroccan sun. Travel to the Sun was never intended as a book, but once photographer Vincent van de Wijngaard’s golden, almost weightless imagery of model Saskia de Brauw came to life, the designers realised it was too charged with story and atmosphere to be confined to a simple marketing cycle. “We just thought this is too precious for just Instagram,” reflects Aitouganov. “They deserved to be archived forever.”
Shot over two days, just outside Marrakech, the project unfolded in a wide open plain dotted with hot air balloon operators at the breaking of the day. The nylon parachutes slowly inflated in the half-light “like gentle giants waking up,” recalls Aitouganov. “It was very bizarre, very beautiful.” Each look was styled by Asha, from both past and upcoming collections, and then narrated by de Brauw, who became an active embodiment of the brand’s radiant language. “We took the upcoming collection but then we realised this is not about selling – this is about telling a story,” explains the designer, “so we added in pieces from our first and second collections, and it became this mix of everything Zomer is about.”
Van de Wijngaard, whose background lies more in documentary than fashion, balanced each photograph against the spectacle and softness of the surrounding environment. In both black-and-white and colour, the analogue imagery charts a world waking – from the hazy cold of first light to the blinding morning sun – with de Brauw oscillating between a quiet observer and a kinetic presence, moving lightly among the balloons. “Saskia really goes into character,” says Aitouganov. “She’s been in the industry forever, and she’s incredibly ambitious.” Together, the photographs surface more like memory, soft with nostalgia, than an editorial campaign.
At one point during the shoot, in a spontaneous act of performance, de Brauw clung to the edge of a hot air balloon as it began to rise. “The balloon just kept rising, and she held on until she was suddenly really high up,” recalls Aitouganov. “We had to run and catch her when she dropped. She wasn’t scared at all. But she didn’t realise how high she was until she saw the pictures.”
De Brauw returned to the experience in writing, contributing a series of instinctive, diaristic texts that respond not to the images themselves, but to the atmosphere they emerged from. “We really wanted her to be completely free, and to write from her heart,” Aitouganov explains. The resulting prose, which opens the book, reads less as a narration of the shoot than a parallel rhythm: an echo of the lightness, solitude, and soft tension of the photographs without any attempt to contain them.
The final shape of Travel to the Sun was guided by M/M Paris, who helped edit and design the book, even creating a bespoke typeface for its cover and pages. As with everything in the project, the design studio’s approach was intuitive and collaborative, a response to the mood of the images rather than imposing a fixed aesthetic. The book unfolds with a reflective pace, embodying the photographs’ shifting tones as well as the lingering atmosphere of the shoot itself. Its structure is emotional rather than editorial: a living record of instinct, trust, and shared sensitivity. In the end, it’s not a book about clothes, but about light, and the people who follow it, forever towards the sun.
Travel to the Sun by Zomer is out now in a limited edition of 300 copies.
