This is Connecting the Dots, a series in which writer José Criales-Unzueta looks at how fashion, pop culture, the internet and society are all interconnected.
A famous model, a boat, a chiselled eight-pack, and a tiny speedo — an evergreen recipe for success, and, in 2024, virality.
It’s been just under two decades since Dolce Gabbana first launched its steamy advertising campaign for the brand’s Light Blue fragrance, back then shot by Mario Testino in Capri and featuring models David Gandy and Marija Vujović. That was in 2007. Earlier this week, the actor Theo James and the model Vittoria Ceretti were photographed kissing in a tiny raft in Capri, reportedly filming a campaign for the same Dolce Gabbana fragrance.
They were wearing diminutive white bathing suits, the Italian classic ‘Parlami d amore Mariù’ playing in the background (as it did with the original Light Blue campaign back in 2007). Dolce Gabbana declined to confirm whether or not James and Ceretti are indeed filming a new Light Blue advert, but the context clues were enough for the internet to make assumptions.
And go wild. The clip of James and Caretti was posted first on X by the account @21metgala. This one post has amassed 2.7 million views, with reposts and cuts all following in the hundreds of thousands. Snaps of James have also flooded X, all with variations of the same captions related to his hotness. While this virality is premature given that the brand has not disclosed any information — or confirmation, for that matter — on whether this is indeed an ad and for what exactly, it does serve as proof of concept that, when it comes to fragrance, sex does still sell.
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It’s surprising how much play a 49-second video can get online, but such is the business of internet thirst — and, it must be said, the business of fragrance. If fashion has gone in every possible direction over the last two decades, its fragrance ads remain unchanged and unchallenged. The one constant fashion can rely on, after all, is that fragrance does, and will, always sell, and that hot and sexy people will always help sell it. Why is it that fragrance — a $48.5 billion industry worldwide in 2023 — can follow the “if it’s not broke, don’t fix it” model, but fashion can’t?
The business of thirst
The first time I ever heard of Dolce Gabbana was on TV. I can still replay the voice-over at the end of the original Light Blue ad reading “Dolce Gabbana, Light Blue”. It was the most sex-charged ad on TV in my young, impressionable mind, marked by the close-ups of Gandy, the fragrance equivalent to the Calvin Klein Underwear ads most gay men my age can identify as a key part of their coming of age. Light Blue, both the men’s and women’s versions, remains one of Dolce Gabbana’s best-selling fragrances, and it’s inarguably the most well-known, and all thanks to the campaign. Think of Charlize Theron’s iconic ads for Christian Dior’s J’adore, or Nicole Kidman’s legendary Chanel No. 5 film directed by Baz Luhrmann. These fragrances are known for these campaigns more so than for the scents themselves.
What is interesting is that, despite how hot and cold the online fashion and fashion-adjacent community can be about Dolce Gabbana, it’s the steaminess of James and Ceretti in relation to the brand that everyone can agree on. According to Launchmetrics, Theo James has amassed a total media impact value of $497,000 for Dolce Gabbana this week alone, with a data range from 7 July, the day before the video was posted, to 11 July.
If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it
Gandy became the face of Light Blue in 2007, and while the woman he is paired with has been re-cast over the years — make of that what you will — he has shot a variety of iterations of the campaign since. James possibly replacing him is part of a small shift in the luxury fragrance market, with Rihanna recently being announced as the new face of Dior’s J’adore, replacing Theron, who fronted the fragrance since 2004. (This, too, was first reported via pap shots on X.) Last year, Mugler unveiled Hunter Schafer as the face of its new iteration of the famous Angel scent, Angel Elixir, and Whitney Peak became the face of Coco Mademoiselle, replacing Keira Knightley, who was tapped by Chanel in 2007 and starred in a variety of popular campaigns. (Knightley became the face of the more adult spin-off scent, Coco Mademoiselle Intense, in 2018).
The reason why this works in fragrance is because, in contrast to ready-to-wear, the consumer has no real way of knowing what the product is like until they smell it in stores (or the occasional magazine scratch-and-sniff). Fragrance is evocative, it’s about selling a mood first, a scent second. This is why Kidman running in Chanel couture or James and Ceretti kissing on a boat with Capri as their backdrop work.
The caveat here is that this only works in luxury fragrance where the fantasy is the product, or at least the first entry point. Next-gen upstart perfume brands like Phlur or Boy Smells, who have of late taken up more space in the market, have circumvented this through savvy use of social media and clever seeding and influencer marketing, otherwise the customer is still blind-buying the item without a cinematic dream to buy into. Régime des Fleurs partnered with Chloë Sevigny in a popular capsule, which is another alternative. Celebrities including Troye Sivan and Bella Hadid have also recently launched their own fragrances, giving the licensed celebrity perfume mall brand trend of the aughts a more upscale spin.
Still, as opposed to the clothes on the runways, fragrance is both more timeless and customer-facing. It’s slow to change, and certainly does not require the same level of upkeep. Fashion has something to learn from this level of stability, but the takeaway from the insane and speedy virality of this campaign shoot is that we, as consumers, have used the internet to exacerbate our appetite for newness. The cat’s out of the bag now, and while we can expect the campaign to perform decently online once it’s released, most likely next year, simply because folks will enjoy seeing the final product, the novelty will have passed. That’s what we do now, we spoil things for ourselves.
What I’m particularly curious about is how long James — and everyone else mentioned above — will last as the face of these iconic scents. Just like fashion, fame is now more fickle and volatile than it was in the past. A good fragrance is forever, as is a hot and steamy ad, but the jury is out on whether or not the fragrance business will start moving as fast as its fashion counterpart.
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