assignment: Le City Bag
artist: Lauren Greenfield
On November 27th, 2024, Balenciaga premieres its Le City Bag campaign, captured by director and photographer Lauren Greenfield.
The campaign’s scenography recreates the energy of the front row at a Balenciaga runway presentation, starring a diverse mix of familiar front row personalities. Among them are Devon Lee Carlson, Pernille Teisbaek, Livia Nunes Marques, Camille Charriere, Justine Skye, Dixie D’Amelio, and Olympia of Greece, alongside models Sua Lee, Paloma Elsesser, and Mika Schneider.
Through Greenfield’s lens, the campaign offers glimpses of typically unseen moments before a Balenciaga show. In videos and images evocative of pre-show footage from early-aughts fashion television channels, guests are seen checking their phones, greeting one another, posing for photos and selfies, and mingling under the glow of bright truss lights amid flashing cameras.
Styled with the Y2K spirit that defines Le City, the looks combine pieces from current and past Balenciaga collections with Le City—an accessory emblematic of the era’s most iconic styles. Distinguished by its intricate 25-panel construction in superfine lambskin, the bag is a hallmark of the era, merging maximalist style with practicality. Originally introduced in 2001, it continues to inform the House’s design language today. The Balenciaga Le City bag appears in the campaign in petal pink, camel, black, green, and white Arena Storico lambskin, and metallized silver Arena lambskin. It is offered in mini, small, medium, and large sizes, with a removable shoulder strap that allows for shoulder or crossbody usage.
check out the campaign on balenciaga.com
InstituteTM (collectively Institute Pictures, Institute Studios, & Institute Artist) is redefining how stories are produced and told in the 21st Century. Founded by Producer Frank Evers and Director/Visual Artist Lauren Greenfield, we are a multiplatform production company representing auteur-driven storytellers across commercials, photography, fine art, film, and technology — and producing original work across every screen that those stories live on. Our multiplatform expertise and established global relationships in entertainment, commercial, fine art, and journalism create unmatched reach and cross-pollination of creative work. A film commission informs a photography campaign; a fine art practice shapes a commercial; an editorial relationship opens a documentary. Few companies operate fluently across all of these worlds. Institute was built this way from the ground up.
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