Kenzo Ads That Make You Look Twice by Eric Wilson
THERE’S SOMETHING FUNNY about those Kenzo advertisements.
First came some striking images created by the photographer Jean-Paul Goude for Kenzo’s “X Campaign,” in which two models, one upright and the other upside down, both with their legs spread wide apart, were intertwined to form an X. Never mind that the position was physically unattainable. It looked cool.
Things are stranger still in a fall campaign that the Kenzo designers Carol Lim and Humberto Leon are introducing Thursday in collaboration with Toilet Paper, the cheeky arts publication created by Maurizio Cattelan and the photographer Pierpaolo Ferrari. Mr. Cattelan and Mr. Ferrari have been creating some wild visual projects, like a billboard that appeared next to the High Line showing disembodied fingers, and sweatshirts sold at Colette featuring a frog in a hamburger bun.
The Kenzo ads should also make you look twice. In one image, the actress Rinko Kikuchi and the model Sean O’Pry are pinned to a specimen board with a variety of insects. In another, a kitten peeks out of a polished dress shoe.
“We wanted weird and cool,” said Mr. Leon, who, with Ms. Lim, has brought a street-smart, culture-sponging edge to Kenzo over the last two years. “A lot of people discover a brand by flipping through a magazine, so I want to give Kenzo a voice that is different from everything else.”
This may explain why, in place of one model’s left foot, we see her hand.