It’s Only Louis Vuitton, But He Likes It


1204919228Seeing as he is practically a leather handbag himself, it seems mighty appropriate that Keith Richards is the new spokesperson for Louis Vuitton’s core values campaign, which aims to appeal to an older clientele that the company fears they have lost with the trendy confections Marc Jacobs produces each season. You might remember the company’s ads featuring Mikhail Gorbachev that debuted last year, which garnered a fair amount of publicity, but which we doubt inspired many people to clamor for five-figure damier canvas trunks.

The mystery for Bostonista is how they convinced the rock legend to do this. Did he need the publicity? The money? Did LV offer him another deceased relative to snort? The luxury brand says they will make a donation to The Climate Project (Al Gore’s baby) “on behalf” of Richards. Is anyone else missing the connection here?

Then again, we shouldn’t be surprised by the choice. Drugged-out rockers have long fascinated fashion’s elite, with the likes of Karl Lagerfeld recently paying the ultimate tribute to musical zeitgeist Amy Winehouse in a collection for Chanel. Pete Doherty was Hedi Slimane’s muse at Dior Homme, and Courtney Love was, for a brief lucid period, buddy-buddy with John Galliano.

Shot by (overrated) Vanity Fair-favorite Annie Leibovitz, the ad features the 64-year-old Rolling Stone hunched over a guitar in a lavish hotel room, LV trunk to his right, with a dainty tea cup and a book on top. While the Gorbachev ad was strangely intriguing, and the other ads in the series (from stars like Catherine Deneuve, Andre Agassi, and Steffi Graff) were tastefully boring, Richards’s is simply a complete mystery. Yes, it will get people to stop when flipping through a magazine, but, as much of a Disney-fied self-parody as he’s become in recent years, is he really safe enough for bored society matrons?

What’s next, Marianne Faithfull for St. John? Snoop Dogg for Hermes? Actually, that last one, we’d like to see.

-William DeGregorio