Lanvin fashion house casts “real” people in fall/winter ad campaign

High-end French fashion house Lanvin is using “real” people rather than professional models in its Fall/Winter 2012 advertising campaign, the Guardian reported.

The move is an attempt by the luxury brand to make its products more accessible, Women’s Wear Daily reported. “I was interested to bring these clothes back to the street somehow, and see them on different ages, different sizes,” Lanvin’s creative director, Alber Elbaz, told Women’s Wear Daily.

The company is jumping on a trend started by on-the-street fashion reporters like Bill Cunningham of the New York Times and Scott Schuman of The Sartorialist, according to the Guardian. “Models are a blank canvas to project style on to, but these are people you would sit with at a party and get to know,” Melanie Rickey, editor at large at Italian fashion magazine Grazia, said, according to the the Guardian.

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Lanvin’s civilian models range in age from 16 to 82, and include a waiter, a milliner and a recent US immigrant, Women’s Wear Daily reported. The oldest, Jackquie Tajah Murdock, is a former dancer and administrative assistant.

Ari Seth Cohen, a blogger for Advanced Style who helped cast Lanvin’s campaign, discovered the stylish octogenarian walking though New York’s Greenwich Village last year, the Daily Beast reported. Murdock told the Daily Beast, “I’m still attractive, I still perform and lecture. So why not?”

Lanvin’s men’s and women’s ad campaigns will appear in magazines’ September issues in France, the US, Italy, Great Britain, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, Russia and Brazil, and women’s-only spots will run in Germany, Spain, Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia and the Middle East, Women’s Wear Daily reported. The company will release an Internet video about the campaign’s models on Aug. 21.

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