Pucci teases millennial vanity in new campaign

By

Godfrey Deeny

Published
Oct 11, 2019

Pucci has not had a creative director for the past year, and its future direction remains somewhat vague, but the Florentine label does at least have an innovative new ad campaign, in which it ​teases millennial vanity in a clever case of role reversal.

Inspired by Japanese pop culture, the campaign, which broke this week, wittily teases millennial vanity through a fantasy vacation in Asia, dressed by Emilio Pucci. 
 
“It is taking a joyful and subtle dig at digital narcissism, inspired by a great Pucci collection,” says Patrizio Miceli, the Franco-Italian creative director of Al Dente, which invented the concept and produced the shoots.

This fall/winter 2019/2020 campaign has already broken on Instagram, with the debut of some 40 social media assets of clips and stills. The images, shot in three different Paris studios, will roll out in printed titles this fall.
 
Photographed by Arnaud Lajeunie and styled by Haley Wollens, the first clips feature models Kat Carter and Pan Haowen photographing their own every move inside a neon infested tropical garden or Tokyo style after-hours club.  The models hold mobiles like hand-held mirrors, scanning up and down their bodies and then watching the resulting images life on large TV monitors.

 
In a curious of reverse role-playing, it is now models that imitate influencer self-importance and conceit and not the other way around.
 
The clothes – from retro seaside print silk kimonos to metallic plissé silk frocks covered with Japanese mountain imagery or funky street scenes – don’t look half bad either. Not so surprising, seeing as the brand’s creative team was inspired by a research trip to Japan.
 
Pucci, a division of French luxury behemoth LVMH, has not had a proper designer since Massimo Giorgetti left the Florentine house in April 2017. An unnamed in-house team designed its last four shows. Nor has its last CEO, Mauro Grimaldi, who quit in January of this year, been replaced.
 
Its communications strategy, on the other hand, appears to be moving in the right direction and with plenty of panache.