Subway, one of the world’s largest restaurant brands has today unveiled its new uniforms for Sandwich Artists and managers, that are made using recycled plastic bottles. The brand, which recently made a splash with the launch of its biggest ever menu transformation – Subway Series, has revamped the classic ‘Sandwich Artist’ image with a look that emulates streetwear and high-fashion collection launches. Emulating the style of a top-end fashion brand launch, Subway blurs the lines between high-fashion and uniform-wear whilst adding style and form to a more sustainable fabric.
With a playful twist of irony, Subway’s new uniform launch works with renowned fashion photographer Olivia Richardson to borrow from the exaggerated aesthetics and creative eccentricities associated with the world of high-fashion. Pulling from inspiration across iconic photoshoots and fashion campaigns, Subway teases the space between art and comedy with an aesthetically absurd set of images, embodying the new brand direction with its familiar witty style, including some gravity-defying cups and cookie clutch bags.
The launch of Subway’s new uniforms comes shortly after the launch of the Subway Series Menu. Extending the new Series menu’s signature tagline ‘A New Way to Subway’ and showing that the brand doesn’t take themselves too seriously, the images give a fresh new look and feel to the iconic green and yellow Subway identity.
Subway has been working on the uniforms for the last 18 months, in that time investigating the best way to create an attractive, ‘easy-to-wear’ apparel line and sourcing materials made from recycled plastic. The fabric used for the garments has been specially woven into a polyester blend that uses recycled plastic bottles, and BCI cotton in the t-shirt and polo shirt, to create the brand-new comfortable and easy to wear uniforms.
“We are immensely proud of these new uniforms and that we were able to create them using recycled materials and sustainably sourced BCI cotton. Over the past few months, the brand has seen some big changes, including a whole new way to Subway with our new Series menu, so we really wanted to do something playful to launch the new uniforms. The tongue-in-cheek high-fashion style ‘dupe’ shoot was a great way to bring to life Subway’s fun tone of voice and light-hearted brand positioning and show Subway in a whole new light.”
Louise Wardle, Vice President of Marketing EMEA at Subway
The number of plastic bottles used in the production of each new Subway uniform item includes:
- Baseball cap – is made from 3 plastic bottles
- Bandana – is made from 5 plastic bottles
- Half Apron – is made from 8 plastic bottles
- Full Apron – is made from 12 plastic bottles
- Polo shirts – 7 plastic bottles were used to help make the men’s shirt; 6 plastic bottles were used to make the female shirt
- T-shirts – 8 plastic bottles were used to help make the T-shirts
Accompanying the launch, Subway will also be encouraging Sandwich Artists to get involved in the fashion moment by ‘duping the dupe.’ Activating across Subway’s owned social media platforms, follow along to see how Sandwich Artists dress-up the new uniforms inspired by the creative photoshoot.
