Lunes and Baston's 'Les Règles de l'art' guerrilla campaign used modified classic paintings displayed across Switzerland to break the taboo around menstruation
ARCHIVEHow Lunes and Baston Made Menstruation Visible on International Women's Day
Les Règles de l'art is a guerrilla and experiential public-interest campaign created by Baston for Swiss brand Lunes, launched in Switzerland in March 2021 to coincide with International Women's Day, using publicly displayed paintings modified to include menstrual imagery to confront and dismantle the social taboo surrounding menstruation, according to Reglesdelart.
The campaign operates on two levels simultaneously. In its physical phase, altered reproductions of well-known classical paintings — each modified to make menstruation explicitly visible — were hung in public spaces around the city, transforming familiar cultural artefacts into provocations designed to interrupt ordinary street life, according to Cira Ch. The choice of fine art as a vehicle is deliberate: classical painting carries an established cultural authority that forces passers-by to reconcile aesthetic respect with instinctive discomfort, exposing the very taboo the campaign seeks to name. In Switzerland, where public discourse around menstrual health has historically been limited, the intervention carried particular weight.
Its digital phase extended the local stunt into a broader social media campaign, documented as a social experiment and released as short-form video content, according to En Wikipedia. The campaign is classified NSFW, a designation that itself underscores the central argument: that a biological process experienced by roughly half the population should not require a content warning. Lunes, a Swiss brand operating in the menstrual health space, frames Les Règles de l'art as a direct expression of its core brand proposition — normalising menstrual health and encouraging open dialogue. Agency Baston, based in Vevey, Switzerland, developed the concept and executed both the physical installation and the digital amplification. The campaign carries a Clapboard Score of 64 out of 100.
ARCHIVELunes chose International Women's Day as the precise launch moment for Les Règles de l'art, according to Rm Coe Int. That choice is not merely symbolic. International Women's Day concentrates global media attention on gender equity issues, giving a local Swiss guerrilla activation access to international cultural conversation at minimal additional cost. Timing a campaign about menstrual taboo to that date also ensures the subject matter is framed within a broader discourse about bodily autonomy and equality, rather than as a niche health topic.
The strategic insight driving the campaign is straightforward: menstruation remains a subject of sustained public discomfort despite being a universal biological experience. Research published in academic literature — including work indexed by Tandfonline and referenced by institutions such as Wellbeing of Women — consistently identifies stigma around menstruation as a barrier to health-seeking behaviour and open social dialogue, particularly in European contexts. In Switzerland, public-interest advertising addressing reproductive or menstrual health is not a saturated category, meaning Lunes faced relatively little competitive noise in owning this territory.
The guerrilla format itself is a strategic decision rooted in the brand's resource profile and the nature of the message. Brands such as Always and Bodyform have invested substantially in broadcast-scale menstrual health campaigns across European markets — Always' long-running work and Bodyform's acclaimed Womb Stories campaign represent the high-production pole of this category. Lunes operates at a different scale, and Baston's solution is to convert that constraint into creative credibility: a physical, unauthorised-feeling public intervention reads as more authentic and urgent than a polished television spot. The social experiment documentary format, noted in the campaign description cited by Clapboard, gave the stunt a second life as shareable content, extending geographic reach well beyond Switzerland.
The creative execution of Les Règles de l'art rests on a single, highly legible idea. Classical paintings — works carrying centuries of cultural consensus about beauty and acceptability — are modified to include visible menstrual imagery and then displayed in public as though legitimate installations. The collision between the sanctioned and the taboo is the entire creative mechanism, and it requires no additional explanation to function.
Production credits for Les Règles de l'art are not fully publicly documented in major trade archives. The campaign was developed by Baston, the Vevey-based Swiss agency responsible for both concept and execution. The musical track used in the documentary video component is credited to Eli Sab featuring The 408th, performing the track USA USA USA, a detail documented in the campaign case study materials. The documentary and social experiment framing of the filmed content is significant from a craft perspective: rather than a produced advertisement, the audience receives what reads as captured reality — real public reactions to the modified paintings — which reinforces the campaign's argument that the discomfort being filmed is genuine and widespread.
The NSFW classification applied to the campaign is itself a creative element worth examining. By carrying that label, Les Règles de l'art makes an implicit argument in its metadata: that imagery of menstruation, even rendered through the distancing medium of classical painting, triggers content-moderation instincts that images of equivalent bodily functions do not. This is not incidental but structural to the campaign's meaning. The experiential medium — physical public installation combined with filmed social experiment and digital amplification — is the appropriate form for content whose purpose is to make visible something that social convention renders invisible. In the Swiss public-interest advertising landscape, this combination of physical provocation and documentary capture represents a considered and economical creative approach.
Verified performance data for Les Règles de l'art is limited to archive engagement figures recorded by Clapboard. According to Clapboard, the campaign has accumulated 1,443 views, 3 likes, and 0 comments within the archive. No independent trade press reviews from major industry titles are publicly documented for this campaign.
Those figures, taken in isolation, describe a campaign with modest archive visibility — consistent with a regional Swiss public-interest activation that did not receive significant international trade press pickup. However, archive engagement metrics are a poor proxy for the actual impact of a guerrilla campaign, whose primary audience is the people physically present in the city during the installation and the social media audiences who encountered the documentary content. The campaign's structural design means its measurable effect is intentionally distributed across a physical space that leaves no digital trace and a social media environment whose organic reach data is not publicly reported.
What the campaign does demonstrate structurally is an efficient use of available resources. A single creative idea — modified paintings displayed publicly — generates a physical event, a filmed social experiment, a social media campaign, and a content asset suitable for archiving and resharing. For a brand of Lunes' scale operating in Switzerland, that multiplier effect represents sound campaign architecture. The NSFW classification and the International Women's Day timing together maximise the probability of organic sharing, which is the primary amplification mechanism for a campaign without a paid media budget. The Clapboard Score of 64 out of 100 reflects a campaign that executes its concept with clarity and cultural intelligence while remaining constrained by the limits of its reach and documented impact.
Les Règles de l'art is a guerrilla public-interest campaign created by Baston for Swiss brand Lunes in March 2021. The campaign modified classical paintings to include menstrual imagery and displayed them publicly in Switzerland, using International Women's Day as its launch moment to challenge the social taboo surrounding menstruation.
Baston created Les Règles de l'art for Lunes. Baston is an advertising agency based in Vevey, Switzerland, and was responsible for both the concept and the execution of the guerrilla installation and its accompanying social media and documentary campaign components.
Lunes timed Les Règles de l'art to International Women's Day to maximise symbolic relevance and media attention. The date concentrates global focus on gender equity, allowing a local Swiss guerrilla activation to connect with broader international conversation about bodily autonomy and equality at no additional media cost.
The NSFW classification reflects the campaign's inclusion of visible menstrual imagery within modified classical paintings. Lunes and Baston treat this label as part of the campaign's argument: that a natural biological process shared by roughly half the population should not automatically require a content warning in public discourse.
Les Règles de l'art holds a Clapboard Score of 64 out of 100. According to Clapboard, the campaign demonstrates clear conceptual execution and cultural intelligence in the Swiss public-interest category, with its score reflecting the constraints of limited documented reach and modest independently verified performance data.
Baston amplified the physical Swiss installation through a social media campaign and a documentary-style social experiment film, the latter featuring music by Eli Sab featuring The 408th. This digital phase extended local street-level impact into shareable online content, giving the campaign cultural reach beyond its Swiss geographic origin.
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