
Gucci attempts to channel the
bacchanalia of the Velvet Underground in the late 1960s in this ad featuring Jared Leto, Miley Cyrus and Snoop Dogg, among others.
The
ad features the song “Venus in Furs,” off the Lou Reed-led group’s first album. The title is based on a novel that features themes like female dominance and sadomasochism, all
of which make it a slightly transgressive addition to Gucci’s ads.
Gucci has toyed with similar ideas before. A 2021 spring campaign featured a photo of a man licking a woman’s high-heeled-clad foot while holding Sigmund
Freud’s "Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex." In 2003, the brand featured an ad that showed a Gucci logo shaved in a woman’s pubic hair.
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Visuals in the
latest ad include scenes of decadence, like a man eating sugar out of a pourer, a woman in lingerie being held aloft by a crowd,and two women who appear to be about to kiss.
The ad comes as
French luxury group Kering, the owner of Gucci, recently told analysts that
it expects to deliver growth this year after record revenues in 2021. Gucci celebrated its 100th birthday last year and Gucci recently collaborated with animator Superplastic to
create non-fungible tokens.