Gabriel Weil

The moodboard comes later. First come the founder's turn of phrase, the way a client describes the shop to a friend, the stitch a seamstress refuses to change, the line a concierge repeats to every guest: small rituals a team performs without ever having named them. Details like these rarely survive a brief, and yet they are usually where a brand keeps its character.

From them Gabriel writes a set of codes, a private grammar of tone, image and gesture, and then turns the volume up. What emerges is the brand as its most devoted customers already imagine it: heightened, precise and recognisable from across a room, whether in a campaign, a window, a press release or the way someone is greeted at the door.

Gabriel collaborates with image makers and directors to translate each brand into stories strong enough to hold even the most restless thumb still, then builds whole campaigns around them, from film to stills, so that a single idea runs through every channel. With Brendan Murdock he wrote The Modern Apothecary, which tells anatomē's philosophy, rituals and products as a book, and remains the most complete portrait of a brand he has made.

Few people in this field arrive with a product designer's eye. Gabriel trained in product design before graduating with a master's in fashion journalism from the London College of Fashion, and has since worked across design, development, wholesale, press and marketing. At Dunhill he moved from the product itself into the image of the house, which explains why he can discuss a lining and a manifesto in the same breath.