Italian designer
Roberto Cavalli has chosen four top models to replace
Kate Moss (right) in his new Fall/Winter 2008-09 ad campaign. The campaign, to be shot by
Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin, is inspired by one of our favorite movies, Luchino Visconti's 1963
Il Gattopardo ("
The Leopard), based on the book by
Giuseppe Tomasi Di Lampedusa.
The movie, set in Sicily in the 1860s, stars
Burt Lancaster as an Italian prince struggling to maintain a dying aristocracy,
Alain Delon as his dashing nephew, and the beautiful
Claudia Cardinale as Angelica, daughter of a rich former peasant who represents the new social order. Cavalli has chosen models
Isabeli Fontana,
Angela Lindvall, Raquel Zimmerman and Frankie Rayder to play the parts of Cardinale and the movie's other beauties in the ads.
"I've always been aesthetically fascinated by this film," Cavalli tells
Women's Wear Daily. "I also find
Il Gattopardo, a story that's based on the idea that 'the more it changes, the more it stays the same,' a good metaphor for fashion. In the campaign, the heroine - a sort of new Angelica - dances in the wilderness while a fire rages in the background; she represents the force of everything that is new, yet in the end she dresses like a romantic debutante." We think Fontana for one is perfectly cast as she bears an uncanny resemblance to Cardinale.
