Louis Vuitton Spring 2020 Ad Campaign

Louis Vuitton’s latest campaign is the belle of the ball.

Following its début on the runway in Paris last October 2019, the Spring 2020 collection’s rich Belle Epoque inspiration sets the tone for the new women’s campaign. Actresses and Louis Vuitton Ambassadors Emma Stone and Zhong Chuxi feature alongside a cast of models in an intoxicating short film by director Albert Moya. The art-deco features of the famous Park Lane Hotel in London converse with the baroque stylings of the collection. Moya makes use of pulsating colored lights and spiraling camerawork to create a dizzying rush of lavish imagery. Combined with an avant-garde electro soundtrack, the result is colorfully claustrophobic, but it feels ecstatic rather than uncomfortable.

Photographs by Collier Schorr give the collection a little more room to breathe. Operating somewhere between reality, fiction, and fantasy, her portraits feel direct while also imbuing her subjects with an impenetrable mystique. She uses both the pastels of the hotel and a black backdrop to frame the collection, wisely revealing how different context changes the way we see the clothes and the person wearing them.

Fashion film and photography presents a fantasy. Though the viewer knows that what they are seeing is constructed and so, in a sense, is false, they can still make a connection with the image and recognize an idea of beauty or coolness that exists beyond the dichotomy of reality and fantasy. With its synthesis of restful luxury and restlessness, this campaign occupies an interesting space in that idea. It presents a fantasy that is both seductive and confrontational, both welcoming and unsettling. Nicolas Ghesquière and his creative collaborators continue to enrich the industry by exploring and revealing new dimensions of the fantastic.