In case you hadn’t heard enough about Jennifer Lawrence this week (be sure to watch this and this by the way), here now is a video from the behind-the-scenes of her debut Miss Dior handbag ad.
Shot by Willy Vanderperre, it shows the new Oscar-winning actress posing for the spring/summer 2013 stills shots, all the while speaking over the top about her love of Dior and the timelessness of the bags in question.
“Dior represents beauty and strength in women and that’s how I feel when I’m wearing his clothes, they just make you feel so confident,” she says.
Kudos to Dior for adding her to their Academy Award-winning line-up: Marion Cotillard, Charlize Theron and Natalie Portman included.
On that note, Portman’s latest Miss Dior fragrance film, directed by Sofia Coppola, is also just out. “La vie en rose”, as it’s called, is a beautiful spot, and well worth the watch…
Dior has released a 20-minute online film showcasing the creation of its J’adore perfume.
“Le Parfum – The Film”, as it’s called, documents everything from the sourcing of the scent’s raw materials to the blowing of its glass bottle. To do so it travels from Paris to Murano via Provence and India.
All the while, the Parfumeur Créateur of the Maison Dior, François Demachy, carries the story – albeit in French (a three-minute subtitled version lives on jadore.com).
The write-up reads: “This wayfaring film demonstrates that the birth of a perfume is due as much to the talent of its creator, as to the quality of its raw materials.”
It continues: “Timeless images show the expert techniques of those who cultivate and harvest. Astonishing moments reveal the know-how of those who obtain essences and absolutes from the rarest flowers. This beautiful escapade takes us into the splendour of regal, generous and respected nature.”
Claude Martinez, president and CEO of Parfums Christian Dior, told WWD: “For us, the wish was to [have people] really rediscover the art of perfume and creative passion that animates all the creators working around a fragrance. In a world where fragrances seem to be more and more marketed, more and more ephemeral, I think it’s important to have generations and future generations rediscover that perfume is a true savoir faire. It is a métier of art, a métier of artisans and it’s not recipes from a computer. But it’s voyages, it’s people who grow flowers, it’s people who mix them after, glassmakers.”
According to WWD, it is slated to roll out on TV globally through December, as well as in cinemas in France and China. The Jadore.com microsite also hosts more information about the flowers, the creators and the bottle.
Watch both the 60-second and 20-minute version of the film, below:
A great teaser video here for the all-new Dior.com, which just launched today:
According to WWD, the revamped site unites Dior’s fashion and beauty offerings at one address in a bid to engage young consumers and reinforce the brand’s luxury orientation and couture roots.
“It’s like putting everything in one store. Today, we are more and more doing big stores because we really want people to experience our universe,” said Sidney Toledano, Dior’s president and CEO. “The only thing missing now is the smell.”
In terms of design, a particular highlight lies in the video section of the site, where more than 80 pieces of content are hosted in a circular slideshow (as pictured below) said to echo the entry rotunda of the brand’s flagship store on the Avenue Montaigne.
Dior is also planning to add a digital magazine, viewable on the web, iPhone and iPad later this year.
I love this concept from JWT – the New York-based communications agency has transformed some 3,000 brands into animated characters as a way of comparing characteristics.
Referred to as a ‘brand visualisation tool’, Brand Toys as it’s called, includes everyone from Apple to Nokia, with all sorts of teddy bears, cartoon characters and monsters resulting.
It’s not however merely a subjective project, each toy has been created based on quantitative research, with character and personality determined by Millward Brown’s famous BrandZ study (this year led by Apple), and real-time, online buzz data by Social Mention.
Varying body shapes, for instance, depend on scores for familiarity and potential. There’s even a weather backdrop representing online sentiment.
Brands can be compared with others (see my screen grab above of a few choice fashion brands including Bottega Veneta, Christian Dior, Roberto Cavalli, Gucci, Salvatore Ferragamo, Marc Jacobs, Paul Smith and Ralph Lauren – not sure they’d be wholeheartedly enamoured with the designs themselves mind), as well as across the 23 countries included.
According to Brand Republic, Guy Murphy, worldwide planning director at JWT, said: “To ensure a rosy future for brands, it is crucial to consider marketing as a creative discipline. Brand Toys represents brands as consumers feel them—with personality and character, not as a series of numbers or complex mechanisms.”
For those interested in having a play, it’s also possible to customise the toys. Users can then share their creations via social media.
Released by police early this morning, the Brit designer has since been suspended from his role at Christian Dior pending the police investigation.
“Dior affirms with the utmost conviction its policy of zero tolerance towards any anti-Semitic or racist words or behaviour,” Dior CEO Sidney Toledano said in a statement. “Pending the results of the inquiry, Christian Dior has suspended John Galliano from his responsibilities.”
It is unknown whether the Dior show planned for March 4 will go ahead.
It’s in scenarios like these I wonder whether the speed in which Twitter can power such stories around the world is a good thing. If it turns out Galliano is innocent, which for his own sake as well as Dior’s is hopefully the case, has his reputation suffered irreparable damage nonetheless?
Pre-social media, the story would undoubtedly have been kept far quieter. Yes, it will have likely still been headline-hitting in relevant countries (and rightly so), but perhaps not on quite the same scale. Either way, it seems Dior has made the right move in suspending him, but is damage control all the harder with the advent of 140 characters?
John Galliano became a key 
