Palace Skateboards has been breaking the internet with its banging campaigns since its inception. Flying off licenses and aliens? Yep. Horses jumping over vintage VWs? Yep, they’ve done that too. Palace pushes the envelope when it comes to ads, fusing creativity with commerciality, making marketing fun, and making us laugh.
Since it was founded in 2009 by Lev Tanju and Gareth Skewis, Palace has never taken itself too seriously. Looking back at its first mailout, playful logo riffs on Versace and Chanel logos arrived in the form of “Versafe” tees, giving us a taste of what was to come with a now legendary (and extremely rare) bootleg.
Fast-forward to 2024 and the brand is worn by Southbank skate rats, cool celebs like Rihanna, Kanye, Dua Lipa, and Jay-Z, and fashion folks who can’t resist Palace’s tongue-in-cheek chic. Beyond big-name wearers, Palace has also worked with a heavy roster of brands, including New Balance, adidas, Formula 1, Mercedes-AMG, Calvin Klein, Gucci, Ralph Lauren, Juventus, Umbro, and Harrods.
When Palace gets pally with its collaborators, it remains 100 per cent itself, bringing its infectious skate crew vibes (stemming from the early days when members of the OG Palace crew squatted in Waterloo) to some of the biggest names across fashion, skateboarding, music, and film. Take the 2023 link-up with Kappa and Alpine F1, where a sleepy F1 driver showers away the sins of the night before, places a lucky bet with the leftover chip, and races to the track. The character, played by Palace pro skater Charlie Birch, keeps his helmet on throughout the campaign, even in the shower. Sure, these short films promote the collab, but they also serve as a long-standing look into the creative minds of Palace, offering a form of co-branded entertainment that remains long after the products have sold out.
The London label has continued to bring this kind of humour to its collaborations, where imaginative narratives promote and accompany product releases to further resonate with fans of the brand. In 2022, Palace sent the internet into a frenzy when it announced its collaboration with Gucci. It dropped a blockbuster campaign to mark the luxury link-up, which saw the skate team enter into another dimension as they partied with aliens in an Italian mansion. The chosen method of transport to get to the party? Flying, of course. Lucien Clarke descended into the party using a Palace x Gucci monogrammed umbrella, and Rory Milanes landed a levitating corner shop into a roomy rear garden. To top it off, there was a plush puppet of Alessandro Michele, Gucci’s creative director at the time.
Palace campaigns go where others can’t, where the craziest ideas come to life, pulled off with its trademark kudos and cool. Palace x Gucci’s craziness encapsulated everything Palace does so well. It showed a solid Gucci offering, but how skaters from London would wear it. It was loafers with tracksuits, graphic hoodies and footie shirts worn with monogrammed accessories. It was Palace flexing its muscles with the fashion big guns, thanks to its consistently authentic approach to design and collaboration.
Take a look at some of our favourite Palace collabs below.
Cover Image: Palace Skateboards
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