Cole Haan Fall 2017 Ad Campaign
BY KENNETH RICHARD
Influence isn’t meaningful or extraordinary, it is what you do with it that counts.
For their latest campaign Extraordinary Women, Extraordinary Stories the house of Cole Haan looked to two of fashion’s most influential models and peeled back the layers to focus on ‘meaning.’ In the campaign lensed by photographer Cass Bird, fashion icons Christy Turlington Burns and Karlie Kloss discuss what gives them purpose and what is ‘extraordinary’.
It would be easy to write this off based on the perceived one-dimensional role each have played in our eco-system, that of ‘model.’ However these aren’t models, they are extraordinary people who have actually overcome the confines of their stereotyped roles to find purpose and meaning beyond a lens. Turlington Burns has founded Every Mother Counts initiative, which gives mothers around the world access to maternity care, and Kloss has built Kode with Klossy, which empowers girls to become leaders in tech.
Both have taken their influence to the next level to be extraordinary and we believe Cole Haan has now found a platform with legs, no pun intended. It is how they use those legs that now matters. Building out a platform for extraordinary people to mentor others, talks, or series would be a value add.
The campaign was entirely female-driven with an all-women cast and crew, sets on changing the rhetoric from “I want to look like….to I want to be like”— connecting the art of looking great with the substance of doing great and taking on multiple roles at once as a journey to being extraordinary.
The campaign works mainly because of the video and as stunning as the two talents are in still shots, The Impression recommends giving these talents as many speaking opportunities to address empowerment as possible. Because modeling means more than modeling. And these two know how to model.
Photographer / Director | Cass Bird
Models | Karlie Kloss & Christie Turlington Burns
