I have extensively written about advertising campaigns for famous fashion houses shot by important film directors who tried to create a proper story around a specific product, lending their cinematic talents to fashion.
Apart from enlisting directors, the fashion industry is well known for looking for testimonials among actors and actresses.
Usually, the choice falls on the most loved faces of contemporary cinema, but, last year, Dior used a black and white photograph of Alain Delon for the advert of the fashion house’s classic man's fragrance Eau Sauvage (see also first video embedded in this post).
The picture had a sort of symbolic reference since it was taken in 1966, the same year Edmond Roudnitska created for the French fashion house its first man’s fragrance.
Living legend Delon reappears again in this year’s Eau Sauvage campaign that has actually got a stronger cinematic connection since it features a brief extract of Jacques Deray’s 1969 film La Piscine (The Swimming Pool, 1969) with Michel Legrand’s lounge-y soundtrack "Le Slow de la Piscine".
A favourite among many passionate cinema, fashion and style fans (and the inspiration for a shoe collection by Max Kibardin), the film – starring Alain Delon and Romy Schneider and with costumes designed by André Courrèges (wonderful) – followed lovers Jean-Paul and Marianne in their holidays in a villa near Saint-Tropez.
For its moods and atmospheres, La Piscine seems to be the perfect stylish advert for a fragrance, yet I find it interesting to see how fashion houses are often keen to have famous directors to advertise products for women (ex. David Lynch for Lady Dior), while they seem to be more careful on investing a lot of money in adverts for products destined to men (yes, in this case Dior paid for the rights to use La Piscine and Delon's image, but that's a modest amount of money compared to what you may have to pay to have a famous director shooting a unique advertising campaign for you…).
In a way "saving money" on campaigns advertising product destined to the male market is almost natural since, after all, most earnings in the fashion industry refer to products aimed at women.
Yet, considering the renewed interest in menswear (quite a few online shops
specialised in cutting edge designs for men were launched in the last few months) and in beauty products for men, there will definitely be a change in trends and we will probably see very soon further cinematic ads shot by famous directors promoting products for men.
I'm curious to see where the cinematic thirst for that perfectly stylish ad will take fashion houses. In the meantime, I'm sure many women will approve Dior choosing a young and fascinating Delon as its testimonial.
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