G-star Magnus Carlsen

This is actually a brilliant move by G-Star. Rather than a mere model or some celebrity who is famous-for-being-famous, Magnus carries the utterly unique aura of his fantastic abilities and achievements. Chess may not be an arena that many people know in detail, but everybody knows enough to respect it. Ideas, terms and images from the game have long been presented in all media as proxies for intelligence, complexity, creative strategy and exacting performance under pressure. Compared to feeble chess imagery that we see so often in ads, those concepts are underscored so much more sharply by presenting the miraculously young world’s best player.