On my walk home, I was thinking about a completely different post I was going to make. But then I got home and flipped open a copy of Vanity Fair I found on our coffee table (ALLIE). I like how magazines are so blatant about their purpose as a folder book of advertising, they even spend the first 10 pages exclusively on it before you even reach the table of contents. At least its honest.
One of the first ads was for Louis Vuitton.
The caption on the ad (not seen here) reads: “A single journey can change the course of a life. Cambodia, May 2011.
I feel like the only thing I can say is What. The. Fuck.
Seriously?
Seriously?
I, again, had way to much faith in humanity and thought googling the ad would turn up a slew of articles on this deranged and shocking ad.
I’m not an Angelina Jolie expert but I have, like many, heard about her work with the UN and aid organizations. Angelina Jolies wikipedia page states:
“Jolie began visiting refugee camps around the world. In February 2001, she went on her first field visit, an 18-day mission to Sierra Leone and Tanzania; she later expressed her shock at what she had witnessed.[64] In the following months, she returned to Cambodia for two weeks and met with Afghan refugees in Pakistan.[66][67] She covered all costs related to her missions and shared the same rudimentary working and living conditions as UNHCR field staff on all of her visits.[64] Jolie was named a UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador at UNHCR headquarters in Geneva on August 27, 2001.”
I might be terribly ill-informed on the work she does, but it never seemed as in-your-face obnoxiously driven by capitalism as the “aid” work of fellow “A-list”er Bono. I guess I don’t read enough Vanity Fair.
The first critique of the ad was an article called “Hardly Seems Natural” from Ad Week. Ad Week apparently thinks it’s pretty bullshit that an article on wwd.com says she’s “she’s barefoot, wearing her own clothes, no makeup, and toting her own elegantly weathered monogrammed Alto bag…”.
I think it’s pretty bullshit that Ad Week misquoted WWD.com. They actually said “little makeup” not “no makeup”. And that is a significant enough difference especially since their whole critique is based on the ad not looking ‘natural’ enough.
But the real bullshit is their critique. The biggest problem they have is Angelina not looking ‘natural’ enough carrying a $2000 through a Cambodian river. Because, if she really wasn’t wearing any make up, this ad would be totally acceptable.
We should feel deeply embarrassed and disgusted by a system of American Individualsim that glorifies excessive opulence, wasteful and unnecessary luxury. But our shame and embarrassment should turn to absolute intollerance when the poverty and need of others is used as a marketing spin for a campaign called “Core Values” by Louis Vuitton.
I guess Louis Vuitton’s “core value” is the perpetuation of a system of gross national and global income disparity justified by a belief in the individuals responsibility and capacity to simply work hard if they want to be successful. FYI, the “school life expectancy” for boys in Cambodia is 10, for girls, 9. Guess they’re just not working hard enough.
I like beautiful things and I appreciate beautiful. I respect and will defend fashion as an art form and canvas for creativity as well as a reflection of social movements in a time period. I see a move into the de-genderizing of some clothing trends (stripy shirts and skinny jeans for girls and boys!) as a positive incarnation of social values.
But, can we just look at this bag for a moment? It’s a fucking sac. It is a sac with an obnoxious amount of L’s and V’s plastered all over its fleshy surface. It’s just straight up fugly. Seriously. Is this seriously the best bag you can buy with $2000?!? Go give some broke OCAD student $2000 and I’m sure they can come up with ten bags in a day that are more interesting than this. Oh, but then you wouldn’t have a bunch of L’s and V’s parading around on your bag letting everyone know you paid $2000 for it, so really, what’s that point of that?
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