Zimmermann Fall Ad Campaign Review

Review of Zimmermann Fall 2023 Ad Campaign by Creative Director Emil Vrisakis of Smile Agency with Art Director Gabriele Hackworthy, Photographer Benny Horne, Videographer Andy Swartz, and Model Vivienne Rohner

Zimmermann contemplates neoclassical elegance with its new Fall 2023 campaign. Carrying forward the season’s art-history reference, the campaign features creative direction by Emil Vrisakis and photography by Benny Horne.

Zimmermann’s Fall 2023 collection was influenced by the work of fin-de-siècle painter Rupert Bunny, and features several of his paintings drawn from the collection of the National Gallery of Victoria. Though he was born and raised in Australia, Bunny spent the majority of his life and career in Paris, where he became deeply integrated within the city’s art scene, making him a fitting point of inspiration for an Australian-born brand that is now showing on the Parisian runways.

Like the collection, the campaign imagery picks up on the neoclassical romanticism and pastoral reverie that characterized much of the artist’s work. Perhaps most striking is the campaign’s setting, a Victorian-era Parisian villa with lavish appointments, the solarium brimming with tropical plants in particular being especially stunning.

Zimmermann’s luminous and ultra-feminine gowns are right at home among this lush space, brought to life by model Vivienne Rohner, who seems to be a 19th-century princess brought to life. The accompanying short film puts these portraits vividly in motion and, while it does make an odd choice for the soundtrack, for the most part nicely builds on the emotional atmosphere of the still photographs.

Fitting perfectly within the brand’s long-established ad format, the campaign nicely brings a like-minded artistic legacy into Zimmermann’s lush and luxuriant world.