Take A Moment To Appreciate The Hedgehogs In Gucci’s New Campaign

Did you have an imaginary pet skunk as a child? A hedgehog or frog perhaps? It’s a question Gucci creative director Alessandro Michele pondered when envisioning the brand’s pre-fall 2020 campaign, which is an ode to our childhood preoccupation with fairytales. Shot by Alasdair McLellan with art direction by Christopher Simmonds, the video and stills star, in no particular order, deers, fawns, owls, bluebirds, skunks, squirrels, frogs, hedgehogs, ducks and rabbits, alongside Gucci-clad models.

There’s a particularly sweet moment in the short Sleeping Beauty-esque video, entitled So Deer To Me, when a hedgehog finds a new home nestled on a model’s beanie. Another when a spiky companion appears to nibble its owner’s ear. But, by and large, the campaign’s human interactions garner as many heart pangs as the hogs and bouncy deer do. Dropped during an unprecedented period of isolation, the visuals of people holding hands and hula-hooping with wild abandon feel particularly pertinent.

The campaign is “an ode to retrieved innocence, a return to the infant world, a call for a real engagement with nature and, with that, with life,” read the notes from the house. For 90 seconds, Gucci offers escapism into a utopian realm that’s different to its previous animal-populated campaigns. There’s no Harry Styles hanging out with piglets, but the humanist angle will have you pressing replay again and again.

Gucci’s gift of happy fawns and fluffy bunnies falls in line with a new collaboration with The Lion’s Share Fund, which works to protect endangered species and their natural habitats. “By donating 0.5 per cent of its media spend every time an animal is featured in advertisements, as all the partners involved in The Lion’s Share Fund do, Gucci can give ongoing contributions to drive tangible on the ground results for this urgent cause,” explains the house. To mark the partnership, Gucci posted clips from David Attenborough’s 2017 documentary Richmond Park: National Nature Reserve. Tune in to see the nature historian have a memorable interaction with a stag beetle. You’re welcome.