Moncler Re/Icons: Grace Jones, pioneering the power of identity

The third portrait in Moncler’s Re/Icons trilogy, after Cher and JENNIE, and the one that makes the campaign’s idea plainest. Grace Jones stands in the deep-purple Karakorum jacket, flanked by lookalikes in her signature dramatic make-up. Everyone in the frame is copying her. Only one of them is her.

That is exactly what a reissue collection is: the archive pieces come back, and the world has spent decades imitating them in the meantime. The purple is a reference to her work with Jean-Paul Goude — the images that turned her face into a piece of graphic design — so the jacket quotes her as much as she wears it. Asked about pioneering, she talks about liking a challenge “that makes me feel like I achieved something that was unachievable”.

Seen together, the three films form one argument in three registers: Cher on staying power, JENNIE on the generation that follows, Grace Jones on identity itself. Gabriel Moses puts each of them at the centre of a crowd and lets the crowd do the explaining. It is a rare campaign where the casting, the art direction and the product say the same thing.