Review of Chanel ‘Coco Mademoiselle Parfumé’ Spring 2022 Ad Campaign by Creative Director Virginie Viard with Photographer Theo Wenner with model Mckenna Hellam
by Aidel Townsley
Chanel’s Fashion Editor and Stylist, Ilona Hamer, and photographer Theo Wenner capture poised and playful model McKenna Hellman, for a 2022 Coco Mademoiselle Parfumé Campaign. Coco Mademoiselle was given two names in order to capture the double personality of the fresh and amber scent. Recalling a young and audacious Coco Chanel, the fragrance is meant to be autonomous, charming, and green.
The bottle, designed in 1921, was designed to resemble the Place Vendôme, which Coco admired from her balcony at the Ritz. While the bottle of perfume is itself absent from the imagery, the duality of the scent profile is clearly captured.
A New York rooftop is elevated to timeless gentility as McKenna lounges on stately furniture at dusk. Buttoned up in a suit and flirtatious fishnets, McKenna curls up on the couch, reading a newspaper, titled The Leisure Edition, implying a comfortable intimacy and the sense that she is waiting for the right time to leave for her next event, shoes laced and ready. This contrasts with her basking in sunshine in an inflatable pool, distinctly plastic and cyan, whose bottom emblazons the Chanel logo. In this image, while her waxen figure, while playful, is remote and private. Union between the dichotomous is the profile for this citrus and patchouli scent.
This is accomplished most apparently in a garden shot, where fully dressed in a painted cotton tweed pink, white and black suit from Chanel’s Cruise 2021/22 collection, McKenna hoses down an English rose garden, inexplicably found amidst the city scape. Her hair, styled by Mustafa Yanaz, is in a messy, slept in bun, and she sports two Chanel emblazoned firming “Le Lift” hydrogel eye patches. This image of the Coco Mademoiselle woman is most telling. She is modern, constantly recreating her identity, according to her whims, sensual and independent. She exists in the in-between space, the balcony or rooftop, the simultaneously indoor and outdoor arena.
Chanel Creative Director | Virginie Viard
Photographer | Theo Wenner
Models | Mckenna Hellam
Stylist | Ilona Hamer
Hair | Mustafa Yanaz
Makeup | Cyndle Komarovski
Manicurist | Alicia Torello
Set Designer | Andy Harman