Lanvin Character Studies Chapter 2 Spring 2023 Ad Campaign Review

Review of Lanvin ‘Character Studies Chapter 2– Modern Heroes’ Spring 2023 Ad Campaign by Creative Directors M/M Paris and Photographer Steven Meisel with Models Quintin Van Konkelenberg, Alberth Johnson, Gendai Funato, Job V, and Raquel Zimmermann

Lanvin continues its character studies with another intimate and introspective campaign by photographer Steven Meisel. The campaign also features creative direction from M/M Paris.

The first “Character Studies” campaign introduced a subtle rebrand for Lanvin, marking a shift towards a more minimal and straightforward communications approach to emphasize the house’s purity of design while debuting an elegantly reworked logo.

The new chapter further explores this atmosphere of unpretentious intimacy, as well as introducing menswear looks into the elegant styling portfolio. Meisel’s black-and-white portraits find his eclectic, uniquely beautiful protagonists in moments of unfeigned introspection, their eyes happening to meet his camera lens in sparks of character-revealing connection.

The accompanying short film rapidly stitches together tiny film clips that feel almost like photographs, but have just enough length to convey a sense of motion and transitoriness. The subjects move their eyes to meet the camera or make a small adjustment to their hair or sitting position, letting us see those small human motions that everyone does in a slightly different way, but that we can only come to recognize as a person’s own when we really look.

It’s a subtle approach, but the campaign actually forms a sort of reversal of the typical fashion campaign formula. While most fashion ads feature static, utterly posed and poised moments of visual perfection, this campaign instead focuses on the moving reality between those moments, the in-between moments of shifting, honest reality where life truly happens.

Lanvin is wise to recognize that true luxury exists in those moments, and has done beautiful work to convey its renewed commitment to dressing the characters who live in them.