James Foster, the senior vice president of global marketing for Hugo Boss, is shaking things up with the company’s spring campaign for Hugo, the brand’s younger-skewed collection.

“It’s a conversation, not a campaign,” he said of “Red Means Go,” which launched Wednesday. “It’s a reconceptualization of what Hugo stands for, which is self-expression and empowerment.”

The campaign features an eclectic cast of seven and a series of provocative statements intended to reflect the reality that many young people are experiencing today. They include: “Why couldn’t you get a proper job?”; “And how is that going to pay off a mortgage?”, and “Too risky too different too new.”

Foster said the questions are not meant to evoke fear but rather to encourage young people to keep striving for what they want in their lives through the series of still images and short films.

The cast includes Berlin-based brothers, actors Aaron and Leo Altaras; Czech photographer and director Tereza Mundilová; London-based artist and musician Cato; Brooklynite music curator and content creator Margeaux Labat; London-based art curator Temitayo Famakinwa, and Ohio bedroom DJ Nick Cheo.

The male cast wears Hugo’s retro resort styles, including a boxy double-breasted blazer over a Cuban-collar shirt with matching pleated trousers paired with a tortoiseshell tote, a long-lined, double-breasted suit in textured weave, and a utilitarian short jacket and oversize pleated shorts.

The womenswear offering includes a cropped rain mac over a ’60s A-line mini in a geometric dogtooth print; wide-legged cords with bronzed sequins, and a white suit.

Foster said the Hugo ads have historically been centered around contemporary tailoring. “But as beautiful and stunning as the shots were, a lot of the marketing was relatively conventional. We wanted to shake it up and do something different and put Hugo back in the heart of the cultural conversation.”

He said the cast was selected because they were people who “walked their own path,” and would serve to put a face to the slogans.

The campaign was teased with a billboard in Times Square and will launch on social media as well as through in-store merchandising.

Foster, who also oversees marketing for Hugo Boss’ other brands, acknowledged that it is “rare to get to do a campaign like this, but it needs to be different from Boss. Hugo is rich, creative and provocative while Boss is confident, determined and more polished. This allows Hugo to be brave and outside the conveyor belt of conventional experience.”

Foster joined Hugo Boss in January 2025 as its head of marketing after spending 13 years at Adidas. He also worked for Ikea and Neflix.

The German brand reported its year-end results earlier this week and Hugo sales decreased 4 percent. Both it and the Boss line are undergoing restructuring and redefinition, the company said in December last year, when it announced a new strategy to deal with lackluster growth after boom years in 2022 and 2023.