Nothing makes a fashion statement quite like a little bit of controversy but have couture house, Louis Vuitton bitten off more than they can chew with this 2013 A/W fall campaign?
Louis Vuitton have been accused by various politicians and feminists for glamorising prostitution in a seductive four minute feature film directed by James Lima, featuring leading British fashion models, Cara Delevingne, Georgia May Jagger and Kate Moss. The models are filmed on Paris street corners, getting into anonymous cars and on a catwalk built like a hotel corridor.
Love Magazine, a famous British fashion magazine are responsible for the styling and overall direction of this campaign, however it seems Louis Vuitton's artistic director, Marc Jacobs was left more than embarrassed after his catwalk show features intermittently with the provocative scenes.
The campaign is very sexy, with the models wearing little more than cropped black hair styles, however I still believe there is a strong distinction between couture fashion and promoting female trafficking. To say that the fashion house is degrading of women in this sexual exploitation - what has come to be known as 'prostitution chic', is frankly hypocritical of the fashion industry as a whole. Fashion is an exploitation. Whether it is as overtly sexualised as this campaign suggests, any fashion catwalk marks the female as an object of gaze. The storyline is a sultry portrayal of women but does not go as far as to promote sexual violence and female trafficking.
The artistic directors were obviously not blind to the backlash they would receive when they published this campaign, however fashion needs to be make a statement. Fashion talks, after all.
You can watch the campaign below;
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