French luxury house Louis Vuitton has looked to the Middle East for inspiration for its latest advertising campaign.
In its latest project called Towards a Dream, Louis Vuitton visited Jordan and its rich and varied landscapes, including the renowned Wadi Rum and Petra, to show off its high-end luggage in the best light.
Photographed by Viviane Sassen, the images capture a sense of innocent wonder, with children running and playing through the landscapes, over rocks and across sand.
With intensified colours, the landscape is captured in rich intensity. The sky, for example, is shown as deep blue, while the strata rocks of Wadi Rum become candy stripes of pink. Against these saturated backgrounds, Vuitton has placed its made-to-order packing trunks and cases.
One image has a multicoloured hot air balloon, with cases strapped to the basket, rising above the desert, while another has the trunks set out in the magnificent Roman amphitheatre in Jerash, north of Jordan’s capital Amman. In yet another, children play among the Roman columns in Petra.
“For this year’s campaign, the Maison’s core values come alive in a far-reaching journey to dreamlike settings around the globe. The images are an evocative ode to the inner child, set free in a reverie of otherworldly beauty and infinite possibility," says the Vuitton website.
"Wonders of both man and nature, Jordan’s archaeological site of Petra and the desert valley of Wadi Rum becomes a playground of discovery for local schoolchildren. Among age-old monuments and striking scenery, excavated architecture and sweeping vistas, they follow wherever their imagination leads."
This is not Sassen's first time working with Vuitton, having worked with menswear designer Virgil Abloh on the autumn/winter campaign. For that campaign, Abloh's works were photographed against the dramatic backdrop of the Moroccan cities of Tangier and Chefchaouen.
With a long heritage of making high-end luggage, Vuitton has always had one eye on the horizon, with the idea of travelling to exotic places. Past campaigns have had the fashion house travel to places as diverse as Vietnam, the African savannah, the Caribbean and the remote desert of Palm Springs, California.
