The boutique hotel brand, with properties in Mallorca, Sardinia and Milan, commissioned photographer Cameron Hammond for its ‘The Rules Are Different Here’ campaign. And the Australian has delivered something no hotel photographer would ever have thought of: Model Stella Maxwell, reclining by the pool on top of her colleague Aleks Gavrilovic, a cocktail in her hand, the sun on her skin and the sense that something is happening here that’s more interesting than any concierge service in the world. Two women, half-dressed, frolicking in the pool, because apparently different rules apply here. A woman bringing a berry to her lips, the glass half empty or half full, depending on her mood. And then this rear-view mirror shot: a convertible, the Aethos logo in the background, a face in the mirror – the whole film in a single shot.
It looks as though ‘La Piscine’ has been remade. Different staff, different set, the same tension.
Not a new idea. But in the luxury hotel industry, it is surprisingly rarely implemented consistently.
The language of the sector has remained stable for decades. Cushion mania.
Spa concepts. People dressed in white on empty terraces. Bloomberg
put it matter-of-factly this spring: Hotel rooms
across different price brackets are now almost indistinguishable from one another.
The promise of minimalism has turned into its opposite –
saturated interchangeability, because they all whisper in the same subdued way
.
Aethos, however, asked itself a different question. Not what luxury
looks like – but how it feels. And: What images can be used to
convey that? ( … )
(Now available in German)
