Amina Muaddi has tapped model Anok Yai as the face of her summer campaign, which was unveiled Tuesday.
“Anok was an obvious choice,” Muaddi said. “She’s a girl with such a strong personality, a fighter, a woman who is self made, works for everything she has, has an amazing cultural background. I just find her such a cool girl who embodies and represents the values of the brand.”
In the images shot by New York-based Ukrainian sisters Tanya and Zhenya Posternak, Yai strikes a sculptural pose while sporting the “Charlotte” mary jane pumps with a bold square block heel while looking at a bag, or closely inspecting the Lupita mesh slipper in mocha-toned raffia.
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“She’s like my ‘Fifth Element’ woman,” said Muaddi, referring to the extraterrestrial heroine played by Milla Jovovich in the 1997 sci-fi movie. “I just love how powerful and how piercing her gaze is. it seems she is looking at you through the camera [yet] she is soft and strong at the same time — that’s how I want women to feel when they wear my designs.”
It was also important for the designer to work with female photographers. “I wanted a female perspective on this, especially because the campaign had such a strong image in Anok but also she was photographed in a sensual pose, with very few clothes so I wanted her powerful and not objectified,” she continued. “It’s always different from a woman’s lens.”
Introduced last season, bags — which are now about 20 percent of the summer collection — are front and center in the Amina Muaddi summer campaign.
“It’s an ambitious project because we want to create a business out of it, and we want it to be equally important as the shoes are for us,” she said.
There is the “Ami” bag, a structured purse with a mirror inside the flap that Muaddi described as a jewel of a purse and an ode to vintage bags, and the Gemini, with a double compartment, which she deemed a convenient day bag.