Lady Blue Shangai, a movie by David Lynch
Until not long time ago, TV ads were very unwelcome visitors in people’s houses. They used to interrupt enjoyment and mostly do it in a very insensitive manner. Perhaps, something has changed. Perhaps, fashion has changed something.
Fashion is above all communication, it interacts with the media context, creating an indissoluble liaison. The worlds of visual art, cinema and television are all extremely connected to fashion, that calls for great impact and influential testimonials, as well as producers and directors borrowed from cinema, for campaigns that look like short author movies more than advertisments.
Everyone can clearly remind when, on November the 20th, 2004, for the first time it appeared on the screen the biggest marketing investment in maison Chanel history, featuring a lavish Nicole Kidman in a flowing Lagerfeld pink chiffon dress, wearing Chanel No 5, in the two-minute Moulin Rouge-inspired advertising campaign directed by Buz Luhrmann.
Today, May 15th 2010, Christian Dior has gone far behind. On the launch day of the maison Cruise Collection in Shangai, it is finally unveiled (is it…?) the secret surrounding Lady Blue, the beautiful Marillon Cotillard protagonist of the blue chapter of the Lady Dior saga. The colour and the smoky ambient are familiar to Galliano, that a couple of years ago chose an emblematic and fabulous Eva Green (a personal favorite, no disrespect intended, Lady Cotillard) for the totally blue ad of Midnight Poison.
The authors could not have been more appropriate to the oniric and fairy spirit that the director advocates for the maison: the man behind the camera is no less than the visionary David Lynch, Mullholland Drive and Inland Empire director, not a foreigner to this kind of project, since two years ago had directed the famous Gucci advert in which super models Natasha Poly, Raquel Zimmermann and Freja Breha Erichsen danced and swayed gently reminding us the last scenes of Inland Empire. The photography is no exception: the more commercial but still transgressive Steven Klein pays his tribute to creative director John Galliano, in the third chapter of the saga shooted in the mysterious Shangai.
There is much more, in this 16 minutes Mullholland Dior, than the recent trend of corporations paying brand-name directors to rehash chunks of their film work within the context of an advertisement. Of course, the scene in the hotel room and the loss of memory of the Lady clearly remind us of Lynch previous works, but what is most prominent and meaningful here, is the evocated atmosphere: guardian of unparalleled suggestive and symbolic power, the Twin Peaks director develops around the product a world whose quality is totally nonmaterial, seductive and intriguing, conferring to the object, a bag in this case, a value that flows into the identity related dimension of the life style.
Odd enough, the Lady Bag is hardly mentioned. In the 2004 Chanel ad, the famous bottle does not appear at all during the mini-film, the final shot instead lingers on a necklace of 687 diamonds forming the No 5 logo that is suggestively draped down Kidman’s back. So, what’s left, if the object of the campaign is almost absent?… They lived the dream. We loved the dream.
