Ranking

Passionate about digital and luxury, I decided to es-tablish a ranking of the best advertising campaigns for each season. This ranking focuses on the spring summer 2016 campaigns published in January 2016 fashion magazines.

The ranking is purely subjective, although many cri-teria are taken into consideration. I start from the premise that a good campaign should be memora-ble, create emotion, tell a story, be easily shareable, and reflect the identity of the brand. I welcome any form of creativity as long as it is relevant to the brand.

To start, I only focused on the 5 French luxury brands with the largest advertising budgets, being Louis Vuitton, Chanel, Dior, Saint Laurent and Céline.

Alexis Caulliez

We notice the visual identity of Dior in its gray tones and black & white portraits.

Dior selected safe classic black and white pieces accessorised with bags and

shoes. Dior used models from its last fashion show. The campaign does not tell

any ‘story’ and has little movement.

Photograph: Patrick Demarchelier

Starring: Sofia Mechetner, Roos Abels, Staz Lindes, Maartje Verhoef, Grace Hartzel and Binx Walton.

5. Dior

Last year, the spring summer ad-vertising campaign was shot by Peter Lindberg starring Jennifer Lawrence. I am very disappoint-ed by the lack of research and style of these images. With all the respect I have for Patrick Demarchelier, it seems quite rushed and probably due to the absence of creative direction since Raf Simons left

4. Louis Vuitton

Photograph: Bruce Weber

Starring: Sarah Brannon, Rianne Van Rom-paey, Jean Campbell and Jaden Smith

This season Louis Vuittion releases Series 4 campaigns on the theme of Heroines. The LV logo is visible on the jackets and accessories of the brand. Nicolas Guesquiere called Jaden Smith to star in this campaign. When I see this campaign, I feel like Im standing in a new medieval era. Indeed, the red bricks remind me of a castle and the jacket with patterns of the armour of a king. I think the contrast is a bit messy and the message hard to understand. What is Nicolas Guesquiere telling us? The 2 other series 4 campaigns are much better, however I did not take these into consideration as they pro-more accessories and not ready to wear.

3. CélinePhotograph: Juergen Teller

Starring: Vera Van Erp, Regitze Christensen, and Karly Loyce.

We can quickly recognise the identity of Celine through the logo and recognisable

models. Visually, the image is obviously retouched, as if the brand denounces the

practices of the industry in this regard. The message is strong and in tune with the rebel

image of the brand.

2. Saint LaurentPhotograph: Hedi Slimane

Starring: Steffi Soede and Signe Lunde

models featured in the fashion show and they both have the usually skinny grungy look typ-ical of Slimane. I appreciate the styling and the pieces selected for the campaign, the clothes have movement.

Hedi Slimane brought some changes to his style of campaigns. First, the black and

white is less contrasted and visually it looks smoother. Then he added a texture picture on the top right, giving a bit more context to the

image shot on a white background. He uses

1. ChanelPhotograph: Karl Lagerfeld

Starring: SLineisy Montero and Mica Arga-naraz

Which luxury brand can dare to shoot a campaign in the middle of New York suburbs? Karl Lagerfeld did it for Chanel and the result is stunning. I adore the contrast of the high end clothes and the busy envi-ronment of Brooklyn. The lighting is perfect and the models give life to the collection. The warmth of the lighting makes you feel like summer.