Checking out some of the new Spring 2008 ad campaigns today…I’ve been waiting to see what Marc Jacobs and Juergen Teller were going to do with Vicky Beckham, having read that she would be the star of the upcoming MJ campaign…and I have to say…the concept for this shoot rocks…love it! The image above - which is already running in a few mags - is probably the coolest MJ ad ever. Poshers in a giant Marc Jacobs bag with her legs splayed, the new no heel/reverse heel/insane heel shoes on her feet the only visible product. (I love these shoes FYI - my jaw was on the ground when I saw them on the runway at Marc’s New York show last September.) Dedicated followers of fashion will notice more than a hint of the legendary photographer Guy Bourdin’s influence on this campaign - the above shot in fact comes much closer to a rip-off than an influence. The unnatural positioning of the legs is a key component of some of Bourdin’s best work. Bourdin’s ad work for Charles Jourdan often featured staged “crime scenes”, where the models appeared dead, their fantastic taste in footwear the only visible sign of the glamorous lives they once led. Carine Roitfeld - in an interview in the current Self Service magazine - casually mentions that she thinks there have only been a few originals in fashion photography, and that everyone else is just imitating. She says this not in a hyper-critical manner, merely as a statement of dry fact. Two of the originals she credits are Newton and Bourdin. I see Marc Jacobs and Juergen Teller not really as imitators…instead I think they are simply men with good taste and a strong knowledge of fashion history. Right?

Posted in campaigns, celebs