Courtesy of Moncler An image from Moncler’s new advertising campaign, photographed by Bruce Weber.Moncler’s new advertising campaign, photographed by Bruce Weber, with a self portrait among the images that will appear in magazines this fall, reminds us that advertising can often be more directional than editorial. Think of the influence that Weber himself has had with Ralph Lauren and Calvin Klein, or that Juergen Teller has had with his Marc Jacobs campaigns. We’ve come to expect that ice floe to be broken by photographers allowed to be completely free.
“I think things are changing everywhere and communication has to change as well,” Luca Stoppini, the art director of Italian Vogue, told me this morning in a telephone conversation. Stoppini also works
with Remo Ruffini, the president and majority owner of Moncler, to create the brand’s ads. Moncler, which was founded in 1952, in Grenoble, France, is a pretty hip label but not really a fashion label, as
Mr. Stoppini points out. In a sense, it has the flexibility to embrace its roots as well as be humorous. Mr. Ruffini, who bought Moncler in 2003, has added Gamme Rouge, a special line designed by Giambattista Valli
that is a more audacious take on puffers, and Gamme Bleu for men by Thom Browne.
Courtesy of Moncler Bruce Weber’s self portrait.At the outset, Mr. Stoppini wanted to include Mr. Weber in the campaign, and not simply have him behind the camera. Mr. Weber, naturally, was skeptical about being a subject. “I said, ‘No way!’ ” he recalled with his bearish laugh. But then Mr. Stoppini proposed a donation by Moncler to one of Mr. Weber’s favorite charities, and the photographer agreed to do a self-portrait. (According to Mr. Stoppini, Moncler will donate 100,000 euros, or about $140,000, to Green Chimneys, which provides animal-assisted therapy to young people.)
The shoot was done at Golden Beach, Florida, where Mr. Weber and his partner Nan Bush have a home. As charming as the self-portrait is, with Mr. Weber appearing to snooze amid the tools of his trade, I liked how he incorporated his sense of play into the images. He had Moncler down jackets made for his golden retrievers, and he had a giant ball made from a bunch of coats, which some guys are seen pushing up a gravel pile. At the same time, the absence of an overt fashion message is interesting, and, of course, effective.
“I kind of never want to take it all that seriously,” said Mr. Weber of the perennial question of whether fashion photography is art or commerce. As initially reluctant as Mr. Weber was to be a subject, he is certainly an iconic figure in the history of picture taking. And there is a fairly recent tradition of featuring prominent figures—and sometimes unexpected figures—into fashion campaigns, like the Gap ads and the Louis Vuitton ads with Mikhail Gorbachev. How one advances this idea intrigues Mr. Stoppini. As he said, “It’s not so much a question of seeing things in a positive way. It’s about seeing them real.”
Courtest of Moncler Another image from Moncler’s new advertising campaign, Maybe in more subtle ways, Mr. Weber’s pictures also suggest the world as an open-ended experience. Possibility, possibility, possibility. He said that the Moncler folks asked to observe the shoot, and he said no. Mr. Stoppini certainly supported his position. “A photographer cannot work like that,” Mr. Stoppini said, pointing out how the quickness of digital photography—seeing the image seconds after it has been taken—has allowed some clients more influence or say in the creative process than perhaps they merit. “You lose the mysterious of everything, and the photographer also needs to think,” said Mr. Stoppini of that kind of second-guessing.
But Mr. Weber didn’t have that problem. He was completely on his own, free to play. “In a way the experience was a lot like it was in the old days when an art director or the client just trusted you to do what you thought was good,” he said.
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