Fashion house Louis Vuitton has launched a new advertising campaign featuring tennis superstars Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal. On a staged hike together in Italy’s snowy Dolomite mountain range, the duo were captured by famed photographer Annie Liebovitz, who is well known for her celebrity portraits, albeit usually in a more intimate setting.
Core Values
The promotion in a relaunch of the brand’s so-called Core Values campaign after a 12-year hiatus. Core Values attempts to connect respected global celebrities with the luxury image of the brand, owned by multinational conglomerate LVMH since 1987’s merger with champagne producer Moet Hennessey. Previous participants in Core Values campaigns include actress and United Nations human rights advocate Angelina Jolie, as well as beloved boxing icon Muhammed Ali.
Now though the company has turned its sights on Federer and Nadal, two more sporting heroes, highlighting the intense rivalry and camaraderie they have experienced together during their extraordinary tennis careers. Federer, who was once a lowly ball boy at Wimbledon, went on to win 103 singles titles on the ATP tour – the second highest record of all time. Nadal has won 92, as well as being one of only three players to achieve a career golden slam. The competition between the two has defined the sport in recent years.
Legends
The campaign’s slogan is “Sometimes journeys turn into legends.” Using the tennis pair is intended to illustrate how “each personal journey can reach legendary heights when pursued with determination and a pioneering spirit,” Vuitton has announced, with the luxury brand supposedly “embodied by the athletes who went from youthful prodigies to global icons.”
Seeing the tennis legends, who have developed an enduring friendship, photographed together against the mountainous landscape, albeit for commercial reasons, will still be a thrill for many. The setting of the campaign in the northern Italian Alps cleverly reflects the peaks and troughs that come with a professional career in sport. Behind-the-scenes footage shows the duo laughing and chatting together, interacting with Liebovitz as she plans shots, and followed by a team of other photographers and media as they pose in the wintery conditions – decked out of course in rugged Luis Vuitton kit.
Why the relaunch?
It is not clear why Louis Vuitton has chosen now to relaunch the Core Values campaign but the fashion house, founded in 1854, is no stranger to reinventing itself and ruthlessly managing its image. It collaborated with the Nazi Vichy regime in France during the war, but has shaken off any bad press, saying that was before the merger of LVMH. It also pursued a Danish art student through the courts in the early 2010s for using its products ironically in a piece ironically entitled “Simple Living”, forcing her to get a ruling in favour of her artistic freedom from The Hague, and was hit by a reputational blow in 2017 around the time of #MeToo by accusations of mistreatment of its models. Presumably however no models were harmed during the Federer-Nadal shoot.
