A Louis Vuitton handbag ad features Annie Leibovitz' portrait of three iconic astronauts: Sally Ride, Buzz Aldrin and Jim Lovell.
The News: The Wall Street Journal reports this morning that Louis Vuitton will launch the newest ad in its series of “Journeys” campaigns, featuring celebrity portraits by Annie Leibovitz. Perched on an ancient pickup parked in the desert, windswept, dressed for the road, astronauts Sally Ride, Buzz Aldrin and Jim Lovell gaze at the moon as if it’s their next stop.
Next to Ride on the hood, overstuffed with maps and a pair of field glasses, is a $1,530 Vuitton Icare carryall, named after Icarus, the figure in Greek mythology who flew on wings of wax.
The ad series will debut June 3 on the web at www.louisvuittonjourneys.com and appear in July magazines. It includes a video in which Ride (the first woman in space), Aldrin (the second man on the moon) and Lovell (captain of the starcrossed Apollo 13 mission) discuss how space changed their lives.
Says the Journal’s Rachel Dodes:
The campaign, with agency Ogilvy & Mather, marks the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission to the moon and is intended to be “an homage to these great travelers,” said Antoine Arnault, Vuitton’s head of communications and son of Chairman Bernard Arnault, the richest man in France. He said the astronauts each donated a “significant” portion of their modeling fee to Al Gore’s Climate Project, though he declined to specify how much.
This isn’t the first time Vuitton has picked an unlikely icon to endorse its handbags and suitcases. Mikhail Gorbachev and Keith Richards appeared in “Core Values” ads, and previous Journeys ads featured a barefoot Sean Connery and father and daughter film directors Francis and Sofia Coppola.
The Space 2.0 Connection: Maybe there isn’t one. As we focus on the business details of getting space technology startups off the ground, we shouldn’t lose sight of the emotional connection that many Americans still have to the space program we followed as kids.
Filed under: 8th Continent Project, News, Space 2.0 | Tagged: 8th Continent Project, Annie Leibowitz, Business, Buzz Aldrin, Jim Lovell, NASA, Sally Ride, space tourism, Vuitton
