Benefit Taps David LaChapelle for Its New Ad Campaign

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The humor and the boldness of this campaign

made it an instant iconic visual for us.

We selected David LaChapelle to work with us

on our new color launch for They re Real.

David weaves layers upon layers of stories into his sets.

Every element, every detail aids in the weaving

of this complex tale that just engages the viewer endlessly.

Shadows and like, you know, danger, and you know sex,

and you know breaking rules, yeah.

It s escape is we put it together intuitively

and you look at it and it s like you don t really know

what this story s about and then you just look at the pieces

and you re like What does this shark represent?

And it really makes, it just makes you ask questions.

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Our set blurs the lines between fantasy and reality.

You ll notice one of the set elements in the background

is a larger-than-life hand that has

lie detector sensors on the fingers.

This of course alludes back to the original

Lie Detector campaign.

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So using bars of light across the eye,

and lots of shadows and rich colors and vignettes

and then these out sized objects, it s gonna be like,

you know you re totally far away from normal details,

except we re not doing it in posts.

We re not cutting things out and doing it in posts,

it s not illustration, it s not digital.

It s live, it s real.

I mean it s caught on film, it s there.

So the concept of the wardrobe for the shoot today

is an ode to the 40s kind of gangster mafia.

So super sexy, lot of skin showing, and wind blowing,

and touch of 40s gangster,

but just kind of a sexy LaChapelle twist.

My favorite element of the visual

is the shark that s floating over the bed.

To me this symbolizes a kind of femme-fatale danger.

I mean one look at our heroine and you can tell,

she s a man eater.

On set actually, our model s wearing the blue shade

of They re Real liner,

which we think is perfect because the blue

is great to bring out the whites of your eyes,

make brown tones look warmer and more yellow,

and if you have blue eyes it make them just pop even more.

So the question of course is

Hey, how do we continue the story, this magic?

We knew that he could, more than any other,

continue our story in a new, bold, unexpected,

and memorable way.

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