SHOWnews: Your A/W 24 Campaign Review

Versace Campaign Rating: 8.5/10

Donatella Versace’s prissy glamour for A/W 24 makes a rebel yell at the Chateau Marmont in the Mert & Marcus-lensed campaign for Versace. Italian catwalk queen Vittoria Cerretti and Loli Bahia slide easily between LA tranquility and quintessential Italian sensuality. While the runway show was coded in unmistakable merchandising, Mert & Marcus unlocked the single-minded ferocity that is the draw behind the prototypical Versace woman — very alluring and very strong. This campaign exemplifies how you jumpstart a surprisingly modest Versace runway turn into the powerhouse, brazen attitude we expect from Versace.

Dior Campaign Rating: 6/10

A timeless moment is the implication for Dior A/W 24 campaign images. And it is: Belgian designer Veronique Branquinho’s timeless moment. Twenty years ago at Pitti Uomo, Branquinho Homme staged a collection of real men’s classics. Her menswear was founded on totemic articles — lamb leather bomber jackets, duffle coats, turtlenecks, leather trenches, brown tuxedos, cummerbunds…sturdy stuff for men. Then she set a scene of non-models in a version of the David Lynch ‘red room’ for a dose of unsettling alienation. That was the flashback Maria Grazia Chiuri and the visual artist Sarah Jones brought to mind, not their sterile reinterpretation of Marc Bohan and Philippe Guibourgé’s symbolic ready-to-wear collection from 1967. Yes, the campaign cannage skirt resembles a fun linoleum floor. Yes, you can subvert the sharpness of these ladylike leopard hemlines with a hyper-sexual something. Yet it does not speak for itself. It does not speak to the badass heroism of Catherine Dior, Miss Dior’s namesake. It speaks for Veronique Branquinho’s peak men's show from twenty years ago. It speaks to models posed at the intersection of sterility and lifelessness. Yay us.

dunhill Campaign Rating: 5/10

Sorry but shouldn't this be a fashion campaign on point period? Where is Kit Butler? Where has Jonas Glöer vanished off to? Did dunhill model icons George Barnett, Will Chalker and Armando Cabral cancel from stomach bugs? In the seasonal debut of creative director Simon Holloway, dunhill missed the mark with top model authenticity. You need models who can transmit the idea to brand its will onto your psyche, to rattle your insides. At best, dunhill presents the menswear intensity of poised, archetypal notions of masculine elegance in portrait posings. Stylist Tom Guiness curates this approach often using his detailed sense of specific style within menswear worlds. At worst, we are mad because this is not a fashion campaign, just pictures. Great dog though!

Moschino Campaign Rating: 7/10

Moschino creative director Adrian Appiolaza, stylist Alastair McKimm and renowned photographer Willy Vanderperre bring a mix of good taste, conviviality and appreciation for the thrill of routine activities to present a colourful depiction of Moschino in the city. Laura Rylands and Farah Nieuwburg revisit their catwalk looks to give life to the characters their runway selves suggested. And so we see Rylands with a gleeful energy resulting from snagging a freshly baked baguette as Nieuwburg sifts through the vinyl bin looking for Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew to innovate her Tuesday, much like Appiolaza’s ‘LOVE’ t-shirt has done with her wardrobe. New to the sunny circle is model legend Julia Nobis, who offers a touch of nostalgia with a near-wink, grin and smile that recalls a certain spirit from old i-D...no, no, perhaps we are reading too much into this campaign. Let's get lost in a lunch break instead.

Achilles Ion Gabriel Campaign Rating: 6.5/10

Achilles Ion Gabriel launched his namesake line in January. As creative director at Camper, he also launched his first spring campaign at Camperlab. The first campaign for Achilles Ion Gabriel maintains the gender be damned styling from the runway while adding a dash of spooky-ooky-ooky for models equally possessed by the occult as they are with a contorted Egon Schiele pose. While the campaign reminds our eyes that Achilles Ion Gabriel has fun ideas, they did not elevate the runway proposal, nor explain anything our eyes already clocked.

Magliano Campaign Rating: 8/10

The Magliano manifesto’s feminine mindset around the Magliano men's clothes conversation moves from a Pitti Uomo classic backdrop to interact with photographer Camille Vivier’s fashion-gone-phantasm aesthetic for its A/W 24 campaign. Keeping ideas of new glamour neutrality from the Pitti show in situ, Vivier and Magliano catwalk stars narrate their lives and personalities, synthesising ambiguous finesse into fascinating as hell eye candy. Campaigns like these uplift fashion’s potential to make us dream in hi-res. Magliano and Vivier serve up a reminder that reality is the true illusion, blocking our faux individualities from having stronger edits.

Andreas Kronthaler for Vivienne Westwood Campaign Rating: 8.75/10

Andreas Kronthaler, creative director and widower of the beloved Vivienne Westwood, quoted Henry James in his A/W 24 seasonal notes citing ‘A tradition is kept alive only by something being added to it.’ Kronthaler succeeded doing just that in his new collection lookbook for Vivienne Westwood. We won’t insult your eyesight by citing Westwood’s obvious historical trademarks within the lookbook. What we will praise is Kronthaler’s passion for passion, which gets history-coded into the collection.

Juxtapositions in lookbook images electrify your eyes to refresh your senses of the mad love burning between Kronthaler and Westwood — unrequited love and absence; Renaissance costume and campy codpieces; Westwood Britainia and Kronthaler Austria. Scottish landscape photography reduces the look of Napoleon-inspired, neoclassical, Empire antiquities down to something feral. Each image connects to the brave look of love, the defiant style of losing something (or someone) significant. The Andreas Kronthaler for Vivienne Westwood lookbook champions ethereal extravagance from lives lived before and the elegant days you summon up after. Well done.

Fendi A/W 24 Campaign Rating: 4/10

That the Fendi A/W 24 collection and campaign referenced the spirit behind such cataclysmic style periods as creative director Kim Jones put it, ‘the Blitz Kids, the New Romantics, the adoption of workwear, aristocratic style, Japanese style…’ yet appears visually inoffensive, is in fact offensive. Pollinating those periods over to relate Roman style to suggest a somewhat defiant Fendi attitude of unserious chic does not translate in the campaign pictures. It is very hard to believe industry icons Steven Meisel and Olivier Rizzo worked on imagery with a sterile outcome. Since the video retained a livelier bit of the Kim Jones new Roman utility, we suggest watching that instead. Otherwise, go right ahead and look at this picture. Let its bland practicality inspire your fall wardrobe.

Dior Men's Campaign Rating: 8.5/10

When you want images done right, commission photographer Alasdair McLellan. Kim Jones and McLellan have been waltzing successfully with fashion imagery since 2006. These new campaign shots are no different. McLellan dials Jones’ high-octane volume of Rudolph Nuryev flamboyance (go find his self-portrait by Richard Avedon now!) with Monsieur Dior elegance down for pictures in a simple dance studio. McLellan and Jones placed not too attractive, yet not too normal-looking boys into a relaxed Dior environment, which was necessary. The collection needed McLellan’s Northern forthright attitude to normalise the catwalk collection’s precious wimpiness a little. Jones, in turn, smartly connects with a longtime friend and collaborator to do what he does best — really good menswear under really great lighting.

Balenciaga A/W 24 Campaign Rating: 9/10

Observe an actor’s sensibility in the new Balenciaga campaign, titled ‘The Characters.’ Brand ambassadors Kim Kardashian, Isabelle Huppert and Naomi Watts reveal aspects of their silver screen selves — something coldly vacant, focused, closed — while a heightened sense of alien austerity feeds into the Balenciaga essence Demna has created.

At the center of these unsettling images rests the calfskin Rodeo Bag. While it could distract from the visual tension floating around these stone cold hybrids, the Balenciaga campaign succeeds by gripping your gaze, paralysed with the most vital question this campaign season offers: Where the hell are these women going?