Today Bottega Veneta debuted its new fashion campaign starring A$AP Rocky and Kendall Jenner. The paparazzi-style images zero in on A$AP and Jenner as they sport the Italian label’s pre-spring 2024 clothes while going about their daily lives—cue them grabbing groceries, going for a jog, or being mobbed by fans for selfies and autographs. “The campaign is not in the traditional sense,” said the brand—meaning, it sourced images directly from wire image services such as Getty Images and Backgrid, versus hiring a splashy fashion photographer to take them. (Bottega’s fall 2023 campaign, for instance, was lensed by the duo Louise Maria Thornfeldt.)
The end result is incredibly chic. Seeing A$AP and Jenner sport Bottega’s oversized suiting, luxe leather bags, and slick shades in the wild (even if preplanned!) makes the collection feel incredibly wearable—easy, sophisticated. People are also fascinated by paparazzi images, so why not use that to create a memorable campaign?
Bottega isn’t the only brand to capitalize on this. It’s a growing (and very meta) trend in fashion. Earlier this year, Gucci tapped celebrity couple Kendall Jenner and Bad Bunny to star in an airport-themed Valigeria campaign, celebrating travel style. The photos saw the duo navigating the terminal, carting around their monogrammed luggage. The images had a deliberate paparazzi feel to them—as though TMZ found their location and began to swarm them—but were not directly lifted from the wires, unlike with Bottega.
Compared to the highly stylized, highly curated feel of most campaigns, there’s something that feels a little more free and effortless about a paparazzi shoot. You believe it. To get even more meta about it all, it’s not like real paparazzi images—as in, noncampaign ones—are totally organic either. When It girls like Jenner step out in full head-to-toe designer looks at gas stations—recently she was in Bottega—it’s apparent that there was a predetermined styling session involved. A pap walk is a good way to show off clothing. Doing it in a campaign format only makes it more obvious.
Some brands have even been ahead of the curve on this new approach. Remember back in 2018, when Kim Kardashian would step out in full athleisure Yeezy outfits, and then the brand would use said photos for its campaigns? That same year, Balenciaga also had models star in a paparazzi-style campaign, where they used its chic handbags to shield their face from pesky paparazzi. Even Vogue has gotten in on the fun: Please recall Vogue Italia’s 2005 cover editorial with Linda Evangelista, in which the supermodel was candidly “snapped” by a paparazzo who was none other than Steven Meisel.
So is this officially the end of ultra-glossy fashion campaigns? Is fashion headed towards a more raw, candid, unplanned direction overall? I wouldn’t quite bet on that just yet. Even though A$AP’s Bottega campaign certainly cements the movement as a trend, the images are still highly conceptual—you just know there were a thousand creative calls that occurred before the shoot even began. Even so, the final sizzle reel was totally worth all of the hard work: Like all good paparazzi shots, they’re definitely going to make headlines!
Listen to Vogue editors talk more about campaign pap walks and more of 2023’s best culture moments on this episode of The Run-Through here.
