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Marketing a new vision for a luxury fashion house under the conditions of a global pandemic is challenging. Nonetheless, Givenchy and new creative director Matthew "I don't really look at the Internet that much" Williams have seeded out the new SS21 collection to a smorgasbord of celebrities, influencers, and tastemakers for a new social media campaign.

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The reaction has been divisive. On the one hand, it's a very penetrating campaign, ensuring that Givenchy's new horned caps and galaxy-brained Tabis will spread to all corners of the Internet. The combined reach of every participant's follower count — somewhere in the hundreds of millions — would surely be a tempting opportunity to pass up from a marketing perspective.

However, what Givenchy makes up for in scale, it lacks in cohesiveness. What is the vision? Does it even matter?

A statement on Givenchy's site reads: "The women and men should be powerful and effortless, equal and joyful, a reflection of who they really are — only more so. It’s about finding the humanity in luxury.” But where's the humanity in unrelatable celebrity shitposting?

The tactics vaguely recall the social media strategy of Balenciaga, which elected to fill its Instagram exclusively with images of on-brand models wearing the product in self-styled shoots at home. Whereas Balenciaga opts for unhinged irony and people you don't know, Givenchy definitely wants you to recognize at least some of their celebrity-influencer flock, who are cosplaying as fashion models with inconsistent styling that doesn't quite match Givenchy's luxury status.

We can't be sure what the brief was; however, some credit is due to the new members of the Givenchy fam, who turned up with some creativity — see the best of the bunch below.

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