The first thing you see is a swirl of red muslin billowing in the wind outside a Parisian café. Then the crimson wave clings to the lampposts and slides endlessly through the streets. Suddenly the voice of Juliette Armanet sings “The Windmills of Your Mind” by Michel Legrand, silk on silk, and finally we see our subject: the actress and top model Margot Davy rushes into the Eiffel Tower, she climbs the steps, barefoot, to look to the sky. The train of her dress forms a red slash at each turn. On the first landing, she meets models who turn around in her path. Then, in a sublime zoom out, her bright train highlights the iconic monument that embodies Paris in red.
Continuing on her way, she pushes open a door to reveal the kitchen of a restaurant. She grabs a cake, red, of course, and savors it, tilting her head. At the exit she meets children who play and dance with her train, laughing with joy. But she still runs, and in this iron tower that leads to nowhere, she clearly knows where she is going. A passerby with blue hair, as if smeared with the sky, observes her with opera glasses. Near her goal, the woman in red begins to ascend like an arrow. Her train traces a scarlet zig-zag on the structure of the monument. She has arrived.
From her dangerous promontory, she contemplates, happy, peaceful, the sea of clouds which spreads out at her feet, covering Paris and the rest of the world in the coming night. A final gust of air lifts her train which flairs out to settle as a splash of color highlighting Air France’s new slogan: “Making elegance fly ever higher”. The traditionally sober logo ends with a red slash where the muslin naturally curls up.
In one minute and fifteen seconds, the onlooker will have experienced a magical take-off, a refined crossing through everything that makes up the French elegance that Air France has set itself the task of conveying: cuisine, the art of hospitality, fashion, the happiness of children, up to the sky where speed transforms into a marvelous feeling of comfort and immobility.
Silk charmeuse and special effects
The dress worn by Margot Davy and her train, which is a character in its own right in this clip, were made by the Lebanese designer Rabih Kayrouz. The latter told Pulse of his design:
“Each project of this kind happened for me by chance, following a beautiful encounter. I was having a drink with friends, and there was the stylist Susan Wu, [who was] in charge of the Air France clip. She told me she was dreaming of a Rabih Kayrouz dress for this film, and asked me if I was up for it. I invited her to choose from models that I call my “essentials”, which represent the identity of the brand. Among these dresses, there is one that regularly returns to our collections, in fawn printed silk charmeuse, a print that I designed myself in 2013.
Susan Wu asked that the train be lengthened and reproduced in red. We had this fabric in stock. Director Brian Beletic requested two dresses, in two different fabrics, and two trains. For the first time, I attended -and participated- in the production of special effects, but I will not tell you everything, so as not to break the charm and the poetry of the film. I learned that the director of the film chose this dress because its structure reminded him of something “effelian”. This little anecdote made me happy, as I have always loved building my dresses.”
The new campaign “Making elegance fly ever higher” succeeds “France is in the air” that Air France had used for seven years. It was launched on May 11 in TV, cinema and digital formats in Air France’s five strategic markets: the United States, Canada, Brazil, Italy and Germany.
