>> Tom Ford beauty campaigns are anything but modest (links are NSFW), and the new set for his just-launched Neroli Portofino line live up to expectation. Ford shot a male and female model (the latter, Mariana Braga) a year ago, enacting a shower scene for the just-released campaign.
>> Joan Smalls joined the Estee Lauder stable — which also currently includes models Constance Jablonski, Liu Wen, Carolyn Murphy, and Hilary Rhoda — late last year. Although Smalls filmed a Lauder TV commercial right around the time of her contract's announcement back in December, her first ad just launched for the brand's Women in Beauty campaign, depicting Smalls alongside Jablonski and Wen, shot by Craig McDean. Smalls recently spoke to Vogue about suffering from scoliosis — she was diagnosed at fourteen, when it was too late for the spinal curvature to be corrected with a back brace, and is therefore left vulnerable to injury and pain. "I do my best not to think about it," she says. [Modelinia, Models.com, Models.com]
>> Vanessa Traina has been the face of cult favorite French contemporary brand Maje for a couple of seasons now (see the new Spring 2011 campaign images in the gallery), but now she's taking her relationship with the brand further. Traina, who currently acts as a consultant to Altuzarra and is a contributing fashion editor at T, has designed a capsule collection for the brand, based on '90s fashion (as was, coincidentally, Altuzarra's Fall 2011 collection). The 14 "silk and delicate looks [with] a precise, minimalist edge," as WWD describes them, will launch exclusively at Barneys New York, Beverly Hills, and San Francisco on March 23, followed by a worldwide launch in Maje stores on March 28.
>> After two Chanel dinners thrown within a week — in two different cities — to celebrate her new campaign for the brand, it sounds like Blake Lively and Karl Lagerfeld have become pretty close. WWD reports that at the second dinner, in Paris, Lively was "rubbing Karl Lagerfeld’s back as they stood side-by-side" during Florence Welch's performance. Lively's full campaign is now out — as seen in the gallery, with a couple of behind-the-scenes shots — and who knows what the relationship might bring in the future? Lily Allen, who did a handbag campaign for Chanel a couple of years ago, is now having her wedding dress designed by Lagerfeld.
>> Instead of hiring a professional photographer to shoot their ad campaign, Marcus Wainwright and David Neville handed Abbey Lee Kershaw, Edita Vilkeviciute, Sasha Pivovarova, and Lily Aldridge a digital camera and asked them to take pictures of themselves in Rag & Bone clothes — with full creative freedom. “We have always been very inspired by the girls who do the show,” said Wainwright. “Rather than do what every other brand does and have a high-end photographer take very polished shots, we thought, ‘Let’s flip it on its head to get the girls to take over.’ We wanted it to be very real.”
Wainwright and Neville are hoping the guerrilla ad campaign, which included plastering more than 1,000 posters on walls and against deli boards below 14th St. in NYC, will lure fans to their new e-commerce site, which features social networking elements such as a blog and videos. The duo also enlisted Elettra Wiedemann, Details magazine’s Eugene Tong, Marie Claire’s Taylor Tomasi Hill, V’s Jay Massacret, Julia Frakes of Bunny Bisous, and Sean Sullivan of The Impossible Cool to submit their own images for the site, which will be showcased later in a gallery. “It’s about real people and real clothes, clothes that we want people to wear and feel good in,” said Neville.
>> Jean Paul Gaultier seems quite enamored with androgynous male model Andrej Pejic — late last week, Gaultier had Pejic walk his men's show both as a man (with Veronica Lake-like hair), and then as a woman (closing the show in a fur gilet and high heels). Then, Gaultier's Spring 2011 women's campaign debuted yesterday, showing Pejic with lookalike Karolina Kurkova — both in fishnets and matching trenchcoats — as photographed by Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin. And finally, word is that Pejic just walked Gaultier's Spring 2011 couture show as bride — perhaps the first time ever that a man has worn the couture bride's dress.
>> In what may be the best campaign video in some time, Prada Spring 2011 faces Tati Cotliar, Kinga Rajzak, Arizona Muse, Mariacarla Boscono, and Zuzanna Bijoch don the collection's stripes and give their best dance to Ratatat’s 2008 song "Mirando." And don't forget to take a second look at those sunglasses — apparently Prada has decided to do a limited-edition 500-pair run, and they will be in stores starting next month.
>> Stella McCartney is known for her quirky, even cartoony campaigns, and this time, she enlisted Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott to shoot Joan Smalls and Malgosia Bela for Spring 2011. The ads show Bela wearing nothing but a collage of blown-up images of McCartney's Spring fruit print or Smalls wearing a swimsuit-shaped collage of pastel-colored suit lapels. “I wanted to play with the purity and realism of the citrus print from summer 2011….exaggerating the scale and playing with the female form in its purest form, as nature intended,” McCartney told WWD. A look at that, plus Erin Wasson's minimalist turn for Elie Saab, Patricia van der Vliet's maximalist turn for Sonia Rykiel, and Raquel Zimmermann and Freja Beha Erichsen for H&M, all in the gallery.
>> Over the past year, Megan Fox has done Emporio Armani underwear and Armani Jeans print ads, commercials, Giorgio Armani Beauty spots, and now she's come full circle, reprising her role in more black-and-white Armani print ads, shot once again by Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott. Her newly named men's counterpart, Rafael Nadal, meanwhile, is just debuting his first set of ads for the brand, shot by Alas and Piggott, as well.
