Review of Louis Vuitton Cologne Perfumes Ad Campaign by Artist Alex Isreal
Louis Vuitton’s newest Cologne Perfume Collection arrives not with the sultry glances of a celebrity muse, but with the whimsical vitality of animated shorts, signaling an imaginative shift in luxury fragrance marketing. Created by Master Perfumer Jacques Cavallier Belletrud, the six scents—California Dream, Afternoon Swim, Pacific Chill, City of Stars, On The Beach, and Sun Song—are brought to life through a visual collaboration with artist Alex Israel. In a moment where most fragrance campaigns lean on high-wattage talent and cinematic polish, Louis Vuitton opts for something far more transportive: a kaleidoscopic, narrative-driven world that feels intimate, immersive, and distinctly its own.
Rendered in vibrant tones and fluid transitions, each film functions less as an advertisement and more as a portal—inviting viewers not only into the essence of the fragrances, but into the broader culture of artist-led collaboration that has become core to the Louis Vuitton identity. Each animation is a story stitched to scent. California Dream opens with a young woman reclining on the hood of her car, the city skyline blushing pink as she spritzes perfume into the air, her cassette player humming in the background. Pacific Chill captures a young woman practicing yoga on a high-rise rooftop, where a bottle’s shadow morphs into a towel that transports her and the viewer onto a Pacific coastal trail on the water’s edge. Afternoon Swim bottles the spirit of beachside reverie, while City of Stars follows a woman gliding through Los Angeles in a convertible, her perfume’s name embossed on both license plate and theater marquee. Each short doesn’t just depict the fragrance; it renders its emotion, offering a narrative embodiment of mood, memory, and place.
What sets this campaign apart is not only its format, but the way it trusts story and symbolism over salesmanship. Where traditional luxury fragrance campaigns often project a fantasy through celebrity aspiration or brand ambassadorship with abstract sensuality, this animated campaign offers something far more democratizing. Louis Vuitton’s shorts provide characters that viewers can imaginatively embody, inviting viewers to become characters within the Louis Vuitton universe, not just witnesses to it. The decision to forego a known face in favor of a felt experience cleverly sidesteps the limitations of e-commerce scent marketing—giving shape, sound, and spirit to something inherently intangible. The animated shorts ironically provide the customer with a sense of reality. They don’t ask consumers to aspire upward—they offer a door inward, into scenes of solitude, ritual, and wonder, where the fragrance becomes an extension of self rather than a mere marker of status.
It has long been acknowledged that fragrance is the entry price point for luxury, and though one of the most competitive sectors, it is often weighed down by overfamiliar tropes. Louis Vuitton’s animated approach offers a fragrance campaign that feels fresh, genre-redefining, and genuinely sensorial. The campaign can read as both a bold visual risk and a confident act of restraint to the predictability of fragrance marketing; a reminder that luxury need not always be literal. That in the right hands, a scent can be seen, heard, and imagined long before it’s ever worn. By pairing Belletrud’s nuanced compositions with Israel’s light and lush narrative animations, the house transforms the act of fragrance discovery into something exciting, personal, and irresistibly tactile—even through a screen.
Artist | Alex Isreal