On nostalgia, craft, and why something familiar can still feel alive

The latest campaign from Chanel, built around the Chanel 25 handbag and featuring Margot Robbie and Kylie Minogue, arrives with a peculiar kind of clarity. It is not trying to resolve its contradictions. It is built on them.

From the moment it surfaced, the reaction divided along familiar lines. One reading sees the campaign as another instance of haute fashion circling its own archive—reboots, callbacks, references layered over references until the present moment feels indistinguishable from a curated past. The echo of “Come Into My World,” the 2001 video directed by Michel Gondry, is unmistakable. The looping choreography, the repetition of space, the sense of controlled déjà vu—it is not homage so much as near-reconstruction.

For some, that proximity tips into exhaustion. The argument is straightforward: culture, already saturated with remakes and revivals, does not need another polished return to a known visual grammar. In that framing, Chanel 25 becomes less a statement than a symptom—a sign of a system unable, or unwilling, to imagine beyond its own history.

And yet, running parallel to that critique is another reading that is equally coherent, and perhaps more revealing. Seen from a different angle, the campaign is not about looking back but about insisting on how things are made. It is not nostalgia as retreat, but craft as resistance.

Both readings hold. The campaign does not collapse under that tension. It depends on it.

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To understand the skepticism, it helps to situate the campaign within a broader cultural condition. The early 2020s have been defined by a constant recycling of recent pasts—Y2K aesthetics, early digital culture, the visual languages of music videos that once felt ephemeral but now function as shared memory.

The recreation—or near-recreation—of Minogue’s original video becomes emblematic of this tendency. The looping structure of “Come Into My World” was, in its time, a technical and conceptual feat. It played with repetition in a way that felt surprising, even uncanny. Reintroducing that structure now inevitably carries a different weight. What was once innovative can read as familiar, even predictable.

This is where the idea of cultural cannibalization emerges. When references are repeated often enough, they risk losing their original charge. They become signs of themselves rather than sources of meaning. The past is no longer being revisited; it is being consumed.

Chanel, as a house deeply rooted in its own codes, is particularly vulnerable to this critique. Its identity is built on continuity—on the ability to rework established forms without abandoning them. But continuity, under certain conditions, can blur into repetition.

The Chanel 25 campaign walks directly into that tension. It does not attempt to disguise its references or distance itself from them. Instead, it amplifies them, making the act of looking back impossible to ignore.

That choice invites critique. It also sets the stage for something else.

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Running counter to the nostalgia argument is a growing sensitivity to how images are made.

In a landscape increasingly shaped by AI-generated visuals—images produced through prompts rather than processes—there is a renewed attention to materiality. Not just what something looks like, but how it came into being.

This is where Gondry’s involvement becomes significant. His reputation is built on constructing illusions physically—through camera tricks, practical effects, and carefully orchestrated movement. He imagines worlds and then builds them, often in ways that reveal their own construction without diminishing their magic.

That approach carries a different resonance now than it did two decades ago.

In the context of Chanel 25, the use of soundstages, choreography, and in-camera effects reads as a deliberate stance. It is not simply an aesthetic choice; it is a statement about process. The campaign foregrounds the idea that what is being seen is the result of human coordination, of time, of craft.

This is where the second reading gains its force. The campaign can be understood as a refusal—subtle but clear—to rely on the shortcuts that define much of contemporary image-making. It is not anti-technology, but it is selective about how technology is used. It prioritizes intention over efficiency.

In that sense, the familiarity of the reference becomes part of the point. The campaign is not trying to invent a new visual language. It is demonstrating the continued relevance of an existing one, precisely because of how it is executed.

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The presence of Gondry also points to a developing creative continuity within Chanel’s recent output. His collide with the house did not begin with the Chanel 25 campaign. The Métiers d’Art film featuring Margaret Qualley and A$AP Rocky established a similar tone—coltish, constructed, slightly surreal, but grounded in physical production.

This continuity suggests a broader direction under the current creative leadership. The emphasis is not on rupture, but on refinement. Rather than discarding the house’s visual and conceptual vocabulary, the strategy appears to involve reactivating it—placing familiar elements in new configurations without severing their connection to the past.

There is a risk in that approach. Without sufficient energy, it can feel static. Without conviction, it can feel like imitation. The difference lies in execution.

What distinguishes the Chanel 25 campaign is not the novelty of its reference, but the coherence of its tone. It does not feel uncertain about what it is doing. It does not hedge between irony and sincerity. It commits.

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If there is a single throughline that reconciles the campaign’s competing interpretations, it is optimism.

This is not optimism in the sense of grand narratives or sweeping statements. It is more immediate, more tactile. It is present in the movement of the camera, in the repetition of gestures, in the way the performers inhabit the constructed space. There is a lightness to it—a refusal to treat the image as something overly burdened with meaning.

That lightness is not accidental. It aligns with a broader shift within the brand itself.

Recent responses to Chanel’s product—particularly under its current direction—have been marked by a kind of enthusiasm that feels less calculated than it did in previous cycles. Store lines, consumer reactions, and critical reception all point toward a renewed sense of engagement. The designs are not radically new, but they are being received as if they are.

This is where the relationship between product and image becomes crucial. The Chanel 25 handbag is not being positioned as a departure from the house’s established codes. It is a continuation. But it is a continuation that feels energized rather than obligatory.

The campaign mirrors that energy.

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One of the more striking aspects of the Chanel 25 rollout is how closely the campaign aligns with the product itself.

In many luxury contexts, there is a noticeable gap between what is shown and what is sold. Campaigns operate in a heightened, often abstract space, while products exist within more practical constraints. The two are connected, but not always seamlessly.

Here, that gap is unusually narrow.

The lightness, repetition, and movement that define the campaign are reflected in the object it promotes. The handbag is presented not as a static artifact, but as something that participates in the same rhythm as the image. It moves, it repeats, it exists within a loop of use and display.

Screen Recording 2026-03-25 at 6.00.26 AMly. Light in tone but deliberate in construction.

And, most importantly, alive.