Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev sits in a car, a Vuitton bag at his side and the Berlin Wall in the background as he appears in a Louis Vuitton ad campaign.
(AP Photo/Annie Leibovitz, Louis Vuitton, HO)
The Nobel Laureate who once pursued 'glasnost' and 'perestroika' to revolutionize Soviet-style socialism transforming the geopolitical landscape forever is now out "brandscaping"in the flat world, for French luxury brand Louis Vuitton. It takes a Bold Comrade! to be 'peddling luggage' for Louis Vuitton in their new ad campaign themed “Exceptional People, Exceptional Journeys - The Art Of Travel. ” The hauntingly dark, gorgeous portrait shows the former Soviet president seated in a 1950s Kremlin limousine with a brown and gold Louis Vuitton duffel bag under a small pile of newspapers and magazines at his side and the Berlin wall at his back. The caption underneath reads “A journey brings us face to face with ourselves. Berlin Wall. Returning from a conference”An ironic juxtaposition of Gorbachev’s personal journey: from Communist Party leader to fashion model.
David Remnick's description of the erstwhile Soviet Union breaths life into Annie Leibovitz's photograph. "[A]n old tyrant slouched in the corner with cataracts and gallstones, his muscles gone slack. He wore plastic shoes and a shiny suit that stank of sweat. He hogged all the food and fouled his pants. Mornings, his tongue was coated with the ash-taste of age.... His thoughts drifted like storm clouds and came clear only a few times a year to recite the old legends of Great October and the Great Patriotic War." (Lenin's Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire by David Remnick, Chapter 3 - To Be Preserved, Forever)
Charles Bremner of the Times Online writes in his blog titled `Back in the USSR with French luxury`, "He may be unloved in modern Russia but he is a giant. No lesser word applies to the man who wound down the communist empire of Lenin and Stalin and engineered the peaceful end of the Cold War. He shouldn't be selling capitalist luxury goods." From leader of the unfree, communist world, to a slave to capitalist fashion. As for now it looks like if the capitalist will sell you the rope you will hang him with, the communist will sell you his soul for the opportunity.
Gorbachev looks uncomfortable, but this was the man who carried around the sickle and hammer through the Cold War he should not look relaxed in a shot for one of the most elite brands in the world. Apart from being old, sick and tired, he sure does cut a lonely, pathetic and rather confused figure. His notable anxiety, the setting, the photography, the colors, the mood, the message - the mise-en-scène are all a part of the gambit of this astute advertisement. Getting Gorbachev to use the Berlin wall to sell leather is, to put it mildly, unseemly. As Gorbachev appears using a Louis Vuitton bag, the label is instantly associated with high-power, great thinkers, and everything classy. The ad campaign symbolizes the interweaving of high art, mass culture and commerce. Vuitton, part of the LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton luxury-goods conglomerate group started in 1854 as a trunk maker, says that it is celebrating its corporate "core values" and projecting the notion of travel as a personal journey in the new ad campaign.
New York Times reporter Eric Pfanner writes that the campaign bears fruit due to the "large shifts in the geopolitics of the luxury business". Pietro Beccari, director of marketing at Louis Vuitton, said the goal of the campaign was to broaden the appeal of the brand, particularly in relatively new markets like Russia and China. A high-class sector of powerful men, and those whose intent is to become one of them, will probably be attracted by Louis Vuitton, and they will more likely start using them. The campaign, developed by the agency Ogilvy & Mather, part of the WPP Group, reflects a move by some luxury companies to connect with the everyday lives of wealthy consumers. In the past, many fashion houses and other luxury brands relied primarily on the so-called product-as-hero approach, featuring their products, perhaps accompanied by a model, in a stylized, static image. The new approach integrates the products into more lifelike scenes. None of the celebrities in the Vuitton ads, for instance, looks directly at the camera.
The ad also states that Louis Vuitton and Gorbachev are supporters of Green Cross International – an environmental organization to promote sustained development which Gorbachev is the chairman of. Louis Vuitton differentiates themselves from other fashion brands by demonstrating that they are intellectual, and that their brand is for people who care about world issues. The LVMH group website now includes a brochure about their commitment to sustainability. This makes the ad both a political and an environmental statement, which, especially in today’s world, is a powerful combination. Furthermore, Vuitton states it was also making donations to former US Vice President Al Gore’s The Climate Project to fight global warming.
"The aesthetics of our era, our understanding of beauty, must be embodied in every painting, must become the most important part of Soviet art, which powerfully attracts the viewer to itself." - Konstantin Yuon, 1957
Attempting to understand the beauty of the portrait , we pose the question what is it that we learn from Gorbachev's personal journey? No man is separate from his environment. For Gorbachev, this means placing him in the backseat of a Kruschev-era limousine, gazing at the Berlin wall, taking him back to 1988. There is an added resonance for those whose habitats remain torn apart by conflict. For the rest of us, the bag symbolises the loneliness of the door-to-door salesman.
So how does it end Mr. Gorbachev, is it "Tear down this ad!", "Ich hab noch einen Koffer in Berlin" or is it "Ich bin ein Louis Vuittoner"?
P.S. The Russian Book Title reads: "Murder of Litvinenko. Treason for $7000"
