Self-Portrait "Dreams of Past Lives" Pre-Fall 2025 Ad Campaign

Review of Self-Portrait “Dreams of Past Lives” Pre-Fall 2025 Ad Campaign by Creative Director Christopher Simmonds and Photographer Drew Vickers with model Jisoo

For Pre-Fall 2025, Self-Portrait continues its fruitful collaboration with Jisoo, enlisting her for a third campaign that threads together nostalgia, AI dreamscapes, and the brand’s signature delicacy. Titled “Dreams of Past Lives,” the campaign blurs boundaries between memory and fabrication, retro and future, grounding its surrealism in both the elegance of Jisoo and the quiet theatricality of the clothes.

Shot by Drew Vickers—whose command of atmosphere and emerging AI tools brings a haunting polish—the images place Jisoo in what feel like motel-room tableaus lifted from a lucid dream. Each set is tinged with midcentury Americana, filtered through an uncanny, high-gloss lens: lace curtains and palm trees, rattan lamps and sunset pastels. Vickers’ use of AI doesn’t overpower but subtly shifts the viewer’s sense of time and place, echoing the collection’s intent to feel like “memories of places that never quite existed.”

Jisoo’s styling hits that signature self-portrait sweet spot: polished, feminine, and ever-so-slightly offbeat. A lace blouse and cream mini evoke a ghostly bridal innocence, while a sculpted cotton dress and basket bag combo lands squarely in Stepford-chic territory. The most casual look—featuring a gingham bandeau and nylon windbreaker—balances the surreal surroundings with youthful edge.

There’s an eerie stillness throughout, but it works in the campaign’s favor. Jisoo’s expressions are controlled, restrained—yet full of cinematic tension. Han Chong is right to note the “mystery” she brings to each frame; it’s this withholding that draws the eye and keeps the story intriguing.