Cultural Mogul: Powerrr-ful shoes
Melina Martinez

Louis Vuitton has recently launched an ad campaign that appeals to a larger audience of consumers. Gucci, Prada and other fashion powerhouses have not produced ad campaigns that are cutting-edge and oozing with a pop snobbery that is making Louis Vuitton products some of the most coveted and fashionable commodities. This Fall, Louis Vuitton has pursued a different ad strategy than his competitors. The ad feature Hip-hop mogul, Jennifer Lopez. She is presently a cultural symbol of working class success, female entrepreneurship, immigrant mobility, and the dominance of Hip-hop in mainstream pop. While many fashion lines this season were focused on a retro, eighties/punk style, Louis Vuitton launched a look oriented around another musical culture that came out of the eighties, rap and hip-hop. His purses and shoes are constantly sold out and the products are appealing to a broad range of classes, since they feature graphitti purses[1], Japanese inspired purses[2], and bright pink everything.

The Louis Vuitton ad that I am featuring in this essay contains an image that deals with a complex interweaving of race/ethnicity, class, and gender issues that impress on the consumer both the prestige of Louis Vuitton products and their "hip-ness." Femininity in this ad is both dangerously powerful and controlled. The effect being that J.Lo, a powerful Latina, has a white male slave, carrying her in his back. It is interesting to note that J.Lo's color is barely visible in this ad, because her make-up makes her ethnic identity present, but subtle. I would argue that her working class and Latina background are connected to the feminine (wild) power indexed by her bright pink shoes. Her clothing, whitened complexion, and regal air index a civilized, controlled, and elite femininity, which channels all the raw sexual power of her body.

The juxtaposition of color motif in the ad are evidence of the fusion between competing images of femininity. Pink is usually the color of young submissive girls. Black is the color of control, business men, New York power luncheons. Yet the combination of black and pink is meant to give both black and pink a new image, powerful, raw, controlled femininity, fusing both the dangerous aspects of sexual prowess and the submissive imagery of flirty femininity. The combination of black and pink is a very conscious juxtaposition of a the power color (black) and the the feminine color, pink. The result is a stream of ads that depict a very powerful and gorgeous woman with one bright and highly fashionable pink commodity that is meant to accentuate and strengthen her feminine power.

Jennifer Lopez is the biggest female pop/hip-hop star in the world at the moment. She has an empire called "Lopezland."[3] She has her own line of fragrances, cosmetics and clothing.[4] The choice of Jennifer Lopez in the campaign does two things simultaneously. It brings in the star promotion of a name brand, but in addition, it utilizes both the prestige of Jennifer Lopez as an absolute trendsetter in Hollywood and everywhere else, to boost Louis Vuitton's fall line into the forefront of cutting edge fashion. What more, Jennifer Lopez is one of the few artists in the country, whose checkbook is constantly revealed in magazines like US weekly. She brings a certain cutting edge cultural capitol (hip-hop) to the fashion line. This is reminiscent of MAC's advertisement technique in their "Viva La Glam" ad campaign featuring Elton John, Lil Kim, and Mary J. Blige. The power indexed by the black in the advertisement is connected to the money and prestige of J.Lo.

By far the most potent power that the advertisement is arguing women will exude, if they wear Louis Vuitton, is that of absolute control/dominance over men. In this ad an absolutely rich and gorgeous woman is literally posed like a cat on the back of a beautiful male model. The make-up around her eyes accentuates the cat imagery, but other than her eye make-up, she has a very subtle make-up job. This is no wildcat, but a very tempered, controlled, and regal cat. The black dress she is wearing mimics very prim and proper upper-class socialite clothing, with a bow collar, ruffled sleeves, and modern cut ruffles all down the length of the dress. However, everything is short. The dress is a mini-mini dress. The dress is so short that although the viewer cannot see her famous butt in the picture, the viewer is certainly aware that if he/she could see another angle, her butt would be visible.

But the shoes, le piece de résistance, are quintessentially pink. They are shiny leather (pleather?) boots, with a buckle and a serious heel. For all the power that J.Lo exudes in this ad and that the black clothing indexes, the real source of it is the shoes, a fount of raw femininity, coursing through the model, and enslaving the male. The ad certainly has a reference to the song "One of these day these boots are gonna walk all over you." But to understand the power of this Louis Vuitton ad campaign versus the way that other fashion lines are doing it, I must look at the difference between it and Guess and bebe ads. The defining difference is that Louis Vuitton not only utilizes the image of feminine power, but also that of corporate elite power. The Louis Vuitton ad is not interested in your average female power, but the power of mature, upper class, beautiful businesswomen. The power of the ad is that there is a very narrow, elite, and rare identity presented that correlates to the very rare and elite line of clothing, shoes, and bags. However, the usage of a Puerto Rican, working class pop icon in the add conjures the image of a cracked door to the board rooms and social lives of the upper-classes of America. Yes, Louis Vuitton products are exorbitantly expensive, but not necessarily impossible to attain, making them a major status symbol and "cooler" than a Gucci or Prada bag.

Guess and bebe are fashion lines, which are also oozing with the combination of black and pink to send messages about femininity/power and clothing. The Guess ads are presently featuring three females on an adventure. The women look like college students sowing their wild oats. The black in Guess ads does not index social power, but is more directly connected to sexual power over men. There is more pink throughout the outfits and there is more of a powerful temptress image produced, or even the power of lower class hedonism, bad girl rockers, that sort of thing. bebe ads use the pink and black to elaborate on a different female stereotype. They are focused on secret sexual power of the girl next door, being naughty in her bedroom in black and pink. The pink in these ads is more about the mirage and allure of innocence with a black powerful sexuality underneath ad the true identity. If men are present in the guess and bebe ads, they are consumed by desire, or they are the imagined gaze of the cameraman, who the women call like sirens to their bodies.

The men in the Louis Vuitton ads are completely different. They are the personal slaves of the model. The man in my Louis Vuitton ad is not even looking at J.Lo. He is looking ahead, as if he were on his way somewhere that she needed to get to riding on his back. J.Lo's feminine power in this ad is so great that men are enslaved by her, controlled and respectful. She is not the bad girl, whose power is related to her promiscuity, but to her rarity and ability to dominate. Men in the ads maintain their place in the hierarchy and serve her.

The women in the bebe and guess ads are powerful because they have sex with men, and women are expected to want to be beautiful and promiscuous and powerful like them. But the Louis Vuitton ads present the image of a woman, whose power comes from the fact that her sexuality is present and overpowering, yet almost unattainable. The identity presented of females in the Louis Vuitton ad is almost out of reach, and yet the possibility is open, if you buy Louis Vuitton.

[1] These purses are white on black and say Louis Vuitton in big graphitti letters.

[2] These are the cherry blossom, "eye love you" bags and the Murakami bags.

[3] W magazine, October 2003. 267-271

[4] ibid