Gracie Abrams is not interested in being the perfect Chanel girl. At least, not in the way you might expect.
One month after being named the face of Coco Mademoiselle Crush Absolu, Abrams returns for a new Chanel campaign film that turns the idea of glamour on its head. Directed by English filmmaker Joe Wright, known for Atonement, Pride & Prejudice and Anna Karenina, the two-and-a-half-minute film gives the Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter a rather different kind of beauty moment.
It begins with Abrams sitting in a glam chair, looking almost unrecognisable. Long, flowing extensions frame her face, while dramatic winged eyeliner stretches almost to her temples. She looks polished, glamorous and, importantly, not quite like herself.
Then she takes it all off. Abrams tears away the wig, wipes away the heavy eye makeup and essentially removes the version of herself that has been created for the cameras. One spray of Coco Mademoiselle Crush Absolu later, she walks out the door.
And that is when the real night begins. When her chauffeur arrives at the party, Abrams is nowhere to be found. Instead of posing for the waiting paparazzi, she runs in the opposite direction, eventually swapping her polished cocktail look for a white beaded slip dress.
Her destination is not some exclusive Parisian party. It is a local bar. There, the Chanel girl becomes just Gracie. She dances on tables, plays pinball and eventually crowd-surfs alongside the people around her. The contrast is deliberate: the campaign takes the traditional codes of luxury fragrance advertising and gives them a little chaos.
The message is simple without being overly explained. Glamour does not have to mean performing a version of yourself for everyone else.
The film also arrives at an interesting moment for Abrams. Her appointment as Chanel’s latest fragrance face came shortly before the release of her new album, Daughter From Hell, which has since reached No. 1 on the Billboard charts, adding another major milestone to what has already been a huge period for the singer.
As for the fragrance itself, Coco Mademoiselle Crush Absolu was created by Chanel’s in-house perfumer-creator Olivier Polge. The Eau de Parfum opens with lychee and grapefruit, moves into a floral heart of rose and jasmine, and settles into a woody-ambery base.
It is a fragrance campaign, but Chanel clearly wants it to feel like more than an advert.
With Abrams at the centre, Joe Wright behind the camera and a storyline built around escaping the version of yourself everyone expects to see, Coco Mademoiselle Crush Absolu gets its own little rebellion.
