For its latest campaign, Casablanca Paris has maintained a sharp focus on the original message of Creative Director Charaf Tajer’s Fall-Winter 2024 runway: the influence of ancient Greek discoveries, creations and teachings.
AS HISTORICAL elements that continue to unfold an influence in our modern world—while allowing for a harmonious melding of the ideals of classical beauty and contemporary allure—Casablanca informs its love for Classics with a time-travelling trajectory, navigating complex pathways through time and space, and evoking the odysseys of both Homer and Kubrick with its Fall 2024 campaign.
Casablanca AW24 Campaign
It’s clear to see that the campaign’s exhilarating voyage is also infused with the mesmerising spirit of Eleusis, the legendary Grecian pilgrimage destination that served as a key inspiration for Tajar’s designs for the Casablanca Fall-Winter 2024 collection. Plato, Aristotle, Herodotus, Sophocles and Euripides travelled to Eleusis to partake in mind-expanding experiences facilitated by psychedelics.
Casablanca AW24 Campaign
Those hypnotic and transformative Eleusinian experiences are echoed in the campaign video, with models adopting the classic poses of Grecian gods and Olympian heroes as they are transported down Athenian avenues, up temple staircases, over billowing clouds, through rotating galaxies, into and out of interior spaces.
Casablanca AW24 Campaign
Working closely with director Frédéric de Pontcharra, Tajer blended several musical influences into the campaign’s storytelling, including references to a series of iconic ‘90s videos and, of course, “Venus As A Boy,” Bjôrk’s 1993 single for which the Casablanca Fall-Winter 2024 collection and its campaign video are named.
Casablanca AW24 Campaign
Casablanca AW24 Campaign
“Björk’s lyrics in that song have always spoken to me,” explains Tajer. “As friends have often pointed out, her message—He believes in beauty. He’s Venus as a boy—reflecting my ever-strong curiosity and my constant desire for beauty. And the fact that Venus herself was the Roman reimagining of the Greek goddess of beauty, Aphrodite, adds another layer to our themes of decontextualisation and parallels between the ancient and modern world.”
by Chidozie Obasi