Cabiria, Charity, Chastity is the latest short film from French fashion house Kenzo. The independent film was written and directed by Natasha Lyonne (Orange Is the New Black) and features a star-studded cast including Maya Rudolph (Saturday Night Live), Fred Armison (Portlandia), Macaulay Culkin (Home Alone 2), Matt Lucas (Little Britain) and more.
The bizarre and colorful film was released to coincide with New York Fashion Week. But rather than dressing its stars with the latest fashions, Lyonne was given complete creative freedom to “reinvent” Kenzo’s Fall/Winter collection however she saw fit.
“We had designed the clothes and we knew we wanted to give a platform to Natasha (Lyonne),” explained Kenzo designer Humberto Leon in an interview for the fashion house. “We told her we had a design philosophy of what the collection was about, but which she didn’t need to incorporate. What was interesting for us wasn’t about following the commercial guidelines, but seeing what she would read in the clothes.”
Lyonne worked with Academy Award-winning costume designer Arianne Phillips (Walk The Line) to reimagine Kenzo’s bold print and color scheme into a character all its own.
Cabiria, Charity, Chastity has been viewed nearly 38,000 times after a week on YouTube, but where the campaign really shines is on Instagram, where video views are seven times higher. Facebook’s photo and video sharing app is a popular hub for fashion and beauty brands, so it’s no surprise that Kenzo’s branded content would thrive in that environment.
The film has earned considerable attention thanks to Instagram posts not only by the official Kenzo account but by its stars and fans as well. We calculated the earned media value from posts about Cabiria, Charity, Chastity on Instagram since its announcement in July.
“Earned media” is the value of engagements a brand receives across channels as a result of their marketing efforts. To help quantify what the value of those engagements is worth, the Ayzenberg Group established the Ayzenberg Earned Media Value Index (AEMVI) and assigned a quantifiable dollar amount for marketing gains a brand receives from a campaign or individual engagement that includes social media networks and similar digital properties. (Editor’s note: AListDaily is the publishing arm of Ayzenberg Group. To read the updated Ayzenberg Earned Media Value Index report reflecting the rapid changes in social, click here.)
Kenzo partners with talent from within the entertainment industry to promote each of its seasonal fashion collections. For the Spring 2017 line, Khalil Joseph (of Beyoncé’s “Lemonade” fame) directed Music Is My Mistress.
“The clothing is almost secondary,” said Kenzo designer Carol Lim at the Music Is My Mistress premiere in February. “That actually feels right to us because we’re not here to create a fashion film. All of the directors are proud to include the work that they do with us as part of their body of work.”
Learn everything you need to know about turning insights into data at AList Sessions, a new invite-only event series for marketers, on October 26 in Los Angeles.
