With so many fashion campaigns focusing on beautiful faces, it’s interesting to see Diane von Furstenberg has gone in a completely different direction. The model in its spring/summer 2012 campaign features no face at all!
Photographer Camilla Akrans realized Diane von Furstenberg’s vision and created an ode to surrealist art.
The ad reminds me a little of the new Proenza Schouler advertisement, where we saw Natasha Poly’s head unceremoniously cropped. However the effect of having a mirror where the face should be is much more jarring.
The ad seems to remove the stigma that you need to be a waif thin model with impossibly fine features to wear these clothes. By replacing her face with a mirror we can imagine our own face reflected there, and by extension ourselves in the advertisement.
It’s a clever concept but I worry that the missing face shifts focus away from the fashions. The red and white floral wrap dress the model wears is gorgeous, and a great complement to the oversized white clutch purse, but we barely notice them. Sometimes fashion house’s can be too clever for their own good.
Do you appreciate Diane von Furstenberg’s dramatic new advertisement, or do you think it misses the mark?
