Ferragamo Holiday 2023 Ad Campaign

Review of Ferragamo Holiday 2023 Ad Campaign by Creative Director Ferdinando Verderi with Photographer Rafael Pavarotti with models Aymeline Valade, Ying Ouyang, Malick Bodian

Artistic visions collide for a layered ode to Florence in Ferragamo’s new Holiday 2023 campaign. The campaign features collaborative work between visual artist Paolo Ventura and photographer Rafael Pavarotti.

The meeting of these two artists presents an exciting cross-generational dialogue that grounds various artistic perspectives within the practice of fashion. Ventura actually started his career in the early 90s as a fashion photographer, but eventually stepped out of that world a decade later to pursue his own personal artistic path, developing a style that is primarily expressed through painting but also incorporates elements of photography, collage, and sculpture. Meanwhile, renowned for his chromatically saturated and socially conscious imagery, Pavarotti is one of the most sought-after photographers of today.

The visual dialogue of the campaign images begins with architectural photographs of iconic Florentine locales that Ventura then reworks and renders as paintings with a deconstructivist and geometrical sense of space. These spaces provide the habitats for the Ferragamo-clad characters photographed by Pavarotti, who take on a rich sense of character among this intertwining of timelessness and modernity.

Though this doesn’t really feel like a holiday campaign in any way (other than the timing), we are happy to overlook this misnomer since the campaign is just so strong. It’s an excellent idea to bring together two distinct artists who each have a powerful visual lexicon that draws on the language of fashion while reaching far beyond it. This conversation takes on even more dimension when joined by Maximilian Davis, whose vision for Ferragamo has been one of a new Italian Renaissance, referencing history while rewriting it for the future.

Bringing together distinct artistic perspectives for a theatrical and surreal exploration of the curious persistence of history, Ferragamo delivers a campaign that is both firmly grounded in fashion while looking far beyond it.