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.
Earlier this month, at the height of the buzz around Challengers — the Luca Guadagnino film starring Zendaya, Josh O’Connor and Mike Faist in a passionate and chaotic tennis-induced love triangle — Gucci dropped a campaign with its newly minted brand ambassador, tennis player and recent Grand Slam winner Jannik Sinner.
In the photo, Sinner is carrying a custom Gucci duffle bag in the style of the ones he wore at Wimbledon last year. In a press release, the brand described this partnership as the “first of its kind in the world of sports and luxury fashion”. The campaign image overlay read, “Gucci is a feeling”.
Gucci’s move to capture Sinner in the space where he shines the brightest is effective, and the brand was smart to get to the court first. Louis Vuitton has signed Sinner’s peer Carlos Alcaraz and collaborated with him on a trunk — though the partnership has not made its way to the courts, where all eyes are on these players.
But when the campaigns dropped, the fashion pocket of the internet had one big question: why is Sinner wearing Nike?
The player, also a Nike ambassador, donned a Nike-branded hat and shorts in the ads. To many, it seemed like a misstep for Gucci. But that perception may say more about how our expectations for fashion campaigns have been flattened and simplified than about the effectiveness of Gucci’s strategy. We want something that feels both new and familiar, fashion forward yet literal. Has this become too tall of an order for brands?
The paparazzi effect
The precursor here is the paparazzi effect on fashion campaigns. Prior to Sinner being snapped ‘documentary style’ are a plethora of brands who have, of late, created campaigns based on paparazzi-style images.
Most recently, Bottega Veneta shot Kendall Jenner and A$AP Rocky, a brilliant peak for this strategy altogether, along with GCDS, Poster Girl and Priscavera. Gucci released a pap-style campaign with Dakota Johnson in January of last year (pre-Sabato De Sarno), and, before all of them, came Balenciaga in 2018 — who even styled its 2023 Los Angeles runway show in a way reminiscent to that of a celeb paparazzi walk — and Jimmy Choo, Moschino and many more. The source inspiration, for those unaware, is Richard Avedon’s 1962 spread with Suzy Parker and Mike Nichols for Harper’s Bazaar of the actors being chased by paparazzi, which was inspired by the frenzy surrounding Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor after Cleopatra.
With this in mind, it makes sense that Gucci would lean into the current popularity of candid imagery for its campaign. The public sees Sinner as a star on the court, and given that the tagline for this ad is “Gucci is a feeling”, what we’re being sold is the emotion of him in the moment. That Sinner is wearing Nike in addition to his Gucci duffle bag should be secondary; the idea is to capture him as you see yourself in him. You, too, can feel Gucci on the court, or outside of it.
Yet this seemed to escape fashionphiles online. What we want from our campaigns, the message seemed to be, is to only see what we can buy. The problem with that is we also ask for authenticity. I would much rather have Gucci present Sinner as he is, than outfit him in a Gucci tennis outfit they won’t sell — what’s the point of that? The message is that Gucci isn’t a luxury fashion fantasy more so than it is a feeling you can evoke with a duffle over your regular clothes. Is it enough?
The no-stalgia factor
The added layer to this style of campaign, both in its candidness and in the minimalist idea of packaging a “feeling”, harkens back to the ’90s. Gucci has brought back its placing of the logo across its imagery, which Tom Ford popularised with his own campaigns and Alessandro Michele had done away with during his time at the helm. Nostalgia marketing is all the rage now, and has helped brands not only leverage their history but also connect with a younger consumer who feels a sense of longing for a time they did not experience and therefore missed out on.
Gap has recently revived its original campaign formatting of tight portraiture in navy or neutral backdrops, tapping Tyla earlier this year to reimagine its 1998 “Khaki Swing” campaign in a nod to their white-box dancing video ads. Ahead of her debut show for Chloé in March, Chemena Kamali launched a portrait series by David Sims to set the tone for her creative mission at the house. The images included past Chloé muses Jessica Miller, Liya Kebede and even Karl Lagerfeld muse Jerry Hall, and were hailed as a “return to form”.
There’s also Seán McGirr’s first tease of his vision for McQueen prior to his debut show this year, which featured Debra Shaw and Frankie Rayder, both of whom worked with Lee McQueen. McGirr brought back the original McQueen logo, which was first drawn by Lee over 30 years ago, along with two of the house’s most famous signifiers: the red tartan and the skull (evoking memories of the famous McQueen skull scarf from the noughties, which has recently resurfaced on TikTok).
But nostalgia can only take us so far. Also doing the rounds online are vintage J Crew campaigns (see them on the popular Instagram account @lostjcrew) as well as an old Abercrombie campaign by Bruce Weber featuring a female model with a practically sheer henley shirt in between two male models, one of which she’s kissing. An X (formerly Twitter) user posted the campaign with the caption, “This old Abercrombie campaign was the real challengers,” prompting it to go viral (it currently has 85,000 likes and 12,000 bookmarks).
X content
The caveat of the latter is that Abercrombie stopped working with Weber after a 2010s rebrand, following the sexual harassment allegations against the photographer. In regard to the former, another X user questioned why it is that the clothes in their ads from the ’80s and ’90s look good, but the outfits don’t have the same effect when replicated. The simple answer is that clothes have changed, too. Quality has decreased and fit has changed. We can remake vintage styles and recreate outfits as much as we want, but we will never be Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy.
The bottom line is that we simply now know too much. Not only has the internet become an exhaustive digital archive and a collective memory drive for us to tap into, but what we know about fashion — where it’s made, how much it costs — and what we expect from it — authenticity, transparency — have made ads a taller order from brands than ever before. We want the good old days back, but only if the product meets the standards (or else we’ll find it on Ebay). We want authenticity, but can’t be fooled by prefabricated candidness. But the more we expect, the more dissatisfied we become. Can anyone win?
Comments, questions or feedback? Email us at feedback@voguebusiness.com.
Gen Z broke the marketing funnel
How Bottega hacked the paps-to-fashion media pipeline
The tactics leading luxury brand success in the digital space
.jpg)
