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The two brands collaborated to introduce an exclusive sneaker named the “MOON SHOE,” only available at Jacquemas.com, with the provocative short film starring Nicholas Galitzine. The campaign has captured the imagination of audiences worldwide and found its way into a major online conversation, far beyond just footwear.
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Let’s be real; the shoe is almost like the casually laid-back character. Everything belongs to Nicholas Galitzine. It was an elegant pairing of athleticism and… highly atmospherics. Our filmmaker, Oliver Hadlee Pearch, and stylist Jay Massacret, presented Galitzine in an extremely bare set interacting with the ropes in a way that feels more akin to modern dance than it does a regular sportswear commercial. Raw and slick with internet takeover beauty.
Reactions were nothing short of online-galvanizing. The general sentiments were summed up by one user: “Handsomest man in the world in the coolest shoes.” That one-liner was the ad’s best marketing—the fusion of a star in his own right and a very hot product. Another admirer added: “I’ve seen this way too many times”-an admission shared by thousands of viewers who were endlessly rewarding; that is, until their replay buttons were worn out.
Yet a few were bewildered by the ad’s abstraction and erotism: what was the actual product? One user (another gem of a candid comment) asked, “This is about shoes? I was watching a different plot.” Exhibit A was an articulate user who stated, “Where are the shoes? I just watch thousand times,” emphasizing that Galitzine’s gripping presence would be the biggest distraction. When a campaign develops all that uproar, even if for a short while it abandons the shoes to their own spotlight, it is an even bigger marketing win.
There were some who would not praise the ad and present their dissenting opinion: “Ok, I guess I’m alone here. Definitely a handsome man but this ad is not macho manly to me. The whole flash dance vibe is corny.” The comments under the very next comment also agreed with the label “gayish” for the vibe but stopped short of expounding. The fragmented reception points out how the ad’s artful androgynous approach to masculinity divides into one camp willing and one unwilling to embrace it.
This would have crashed the Jacquemus website in the real world: “So hot it crashed the website.” A user noted, “The aka Galitzine-Sneakers combo brought in so much traffic that the servers unable to cope.” Another user gushed, “Been waiting for this Nike model my whole life. Copped in 5 minutes,” briefly wringing their hands over not getting an email confirmation—classic meltdown on drop day.
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From hilarious remarks on whether the ad was indeed focused on selling shoes to declarations about the actor being basically divine, the Jacquemus x Nike “MOON SHOE” campaign has been a PR masterclass. The collaboration has successfully brought together casualwear with high fashion, yet it is Nicholas Galitzine’s magnetic charm that launches these shoes into viral territory, proving that sociologically, sometimes the best way to sell a shoe is by doing everything to get the consumer to forget they are even thinking of one.
This story originally appeared on Celebrityinsider
