Jennifer Lopez as "The essence of Louis Vuitton"
Amanda Shank

Fashion advertising is a potent intersection of politics, economics, and culture; it is an arena in which culturally manipulated individual desires are shaped to best serve the interests of corporate capitalism. As a postmodern era begins to recognize the complexity and multiplicity of identities, the fashion industry swells to absorb new forms of individuality, expanding markets to draw all potential consumers into the sphere of capitalist participation. Self-competing fashion markets seek to reach the increasingly diverse segments of the population, as old prescriptive means of advertising grow more abstract and disjointed to appeal to these subjectivities.

The fashion and luggage corporation, Louis Vuitton, has been able to remain at the forefront of this postmodernization of culture and advertising. A look at the historical transformations of the company, and specifically the recent fall 2003 campaign lends a hand in understanding how it has been so successful in marketing abstractions of style and gendered power to a diversifying world consumer base.

The Art of traveling through time

The passion of travel

The exhilaration of adventure

The nobility of materials

The pleasure of discovery

Ancestral expertise

The love of fine design

The taste of tradition

Luxury, calm, voluptuousness

Beyond fashions, beyond time

The spirit of a legendary brand

The essence of Louis Vuitton.[1]

The introductory movie to Louis Vuitton's online "Travel Museum" shows these superimposed on images from the past: 19^th century canvas-covered carriages, a craftsman alone in his shop, finishing off a Louis Vuitton suitcase by hand. The complexity of the company's advertising campaign is revealed here. It presents its product in a way that is magnetic to consumers of 2003, while reassuring us that Louis Vuitton is not simply another fickle clothing line trying to make a profit. It is rooted in tradition, "Ancestral expertise," "nobility," it is a "legendary brand" with more than just superficial appeal. But as Vuitton's campaign with Jennifer Lopez suggests, it offers as well a complex and cutting-edge style. This marriage of respectability of tradition combine with modern values to present a postmodern dislocated "essence." Louis Vuitton doesn't market a specific identity, but a quality, a certain power, a style, and does all of this in an exquisitely effective way with its photo campaign.

Vuitton's series of photographs featuring Lopez have appeared in fashion magazines[2] and in larger-than-life site advertisements,[3] this particular shot is available in the online photograph bank, [4] capturing particularly relevant aspects of the campaign ideals. Lopez is dressed entirely in white, a thick, square-shaped white coat with matching skirt, gloves, high heels and knee-high socks bearing the time-tested Louis Vuitton signature print. Her revealed thighs, face and pale lips as well let off a similar white glow, which is all the more striking as it is superimposed upon the tight-fitting black attire of her ruddy counterparts.

She maintains an intensely emotionless expression as her left hand purposefully clutches a large Louis Vuitton purse, unconsciously elbowing the man behind her, and her right extends perfectly horizontal to cover the mouth of another man. The scene portrayed is rigorously decontextualized, as she balances precariously on one man's knee and interferes with a passer-by, identical to the first, who appears to be walking away from her. The message that high fashion offers power to women is painfully vivid, but the ability to define exactly what kind of power is left to the subjective consumer's imagination.

Lopez is not an object of possession, but rather an object of wonder, of attention, confusion, and possibly envy. Access to her sexuality is not blatantly marketed, but the ability to possess the gendered sexual power of fashion that she represents. Her perfectly symmetrical face looks unflinchingly forward as would a well-painted mannequin, and though the two men look towards her, she is interested not in being attractive to them, but in physically dominating them. The modern woman is fashionable, physically assertive, and focused only the absent camera even as she draws the intense attention of the two men. "JLo" scrambles identities; she is both a marked Latina and a de-ethicized "American" celebrity, she is both from the ghettoes of New York and the elite ranks of the media-wealthy.

Louis Vuitton has created a deeply layered image, that appeals to the viewer at the first glance for its composition and intense portrayal of feminine power, but is also thick with signs that reveal its versatility in the diverse world market to which it caters. Its effectiveness is twofold, as the company itself attempts to reconcile its changing image, appealing to broad markets with a single photo shoot. First, the lack of blatant sensuality of the photograph, and the Vuitton trademark symbols gesture towards a history, something more than simply fashion, and more substantial than the industry's familiar shameless, stereotyped sexuality. The respectability of a 150 year-old brand with "traditional" canvas handbags ranging from $450-$695 each is reconciled with the modern intensity of images, of fast capitalism. Second, the magnetic attractiveness the photograph and the woman create an image of desire, but Lopez's violence and refusal to be dominated by the gaze of her male counterparts create an image of power to emulate. The decontextualized nature of this domination has the potential to appeal to a wide audience, as it uses a "Latina" celebrity, but creates her as a nonspecific creature. She has no identity, she only has attributes: style, beauty, independence, and embodied power. The vagueness of these attributes, such that they will potentially appeal to every "modern" woman, allows the image to draw in the multitudes while excluding very few from its power to create desire.

[1] www.vuitton.com

[2] Vanity Fair, November/December

[3] At Tokyo and New York stores, among others

[4] http://www.bellalopez.com/jlo-louisvuittonad.htm