The pandemic has not only changed the way fashion shows are conducted – it is also making designers rethink the way ad campaigns are executed. Gucci recently let viewers be a fly on the wall during the 12-hour-long live streaming of its campaign shoot for the Epilogue collection which will drop in late Nov. Over at Prada, its Fall/Winter 2020 advertising blitz has been turned into one big auction exercise with Sotheby’s that will take place in Oct.
Valentino‘s Pierpaolo Piccioli, fashion’s reigning king of romance, is not excluded from reevaluating what a fashion campaign should stand for in this day and age. And for him, it means an awareness towards a sense of empathy even as we are socially distant today.
The result is a Fall/Winter 2020 campaign dubbed #ValentinoEmpathy which sees a roll call of artists, models and friends of the house like Adut Akech, Anwar Hadid, Christy Turlington, Laetitia Casta, Laura Dern, Mustafa the Poet, Naomi Campbell creating their own self-portraits.
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The brief was straightforward: Don a look from the collection and take your own photo or get someone you’re sharing the moment with to snap you. Piccioli, who himself appeared in the campaign holding a sign that says “Empathy”, was photographed by his 13-year-old daughter Stella, while others like Naomi Campbell and Anwar Hadid relied on self-timers.
And in a big display of empathy with the medical frontline workers and professionals who are fighting hard during this pandemic, the star-studded cast have decided to donate their appearance fees totalling €1 million (S$1.62 million) to the Italian Lazzaro Spallanzani Hospital in Rome, the nucleus of Italy’s fight against Covid-19. #Respect.