Balenciaga Uses Photoshopped Paparazzi Images for New Campaign

Fashion brand Balenciaga has used paparazzi images from the early 2000s and digitally altered the images for its latest campaign.
Instead of shooting celebrities holding the brand’s famous Le City bag, Balenciaga Photoshopped the bag to their hands in paparazzi images taken over a decade ago.
The Balenciaga campaign licenses a selection of old paparazzi images of stars such as Tyra Banks, Claudia Schiffer, Alessandra Ambrosio, Amber Valletta, Lucy Liu, and Paris Hilton.
However, each photo has been digitally altered so that the celebrity carries Balenciaga’s current Le City bag.
For example, heiress Paris Hilton is seen holding a new Le City bag in a 2006 photo — while supermodel and TV host Tyra Banks is Photoshopped with a modern Balenciaga handbag in an image taken in New York in 2012.
The brand playfully enhances the paparazzi shots with a faux “Balenciaga” watermark reminiscent of photos agencies like Getty and Backgrid — which visually contextualizes the Le City bag’s status as an iconic “it-bag” in fashion.
“These nostalgic snapshots have been digitally altered so that each star carries today’s Le City Bag, blurring the lines of history and influence and emphasizing the character of the bag as both retro and timeless,” fashion outlet The Impression writes in a review about the campaign.
“The paparazzi pics are then cleverly finished off with a Balenciaga watermark that apes the familiar Getty Images watermark. While it may use images from the earlier days of the internet, the campaign is an excellent example of smart thinking for the age of digital marketing.”
This is not the first time that a fashion brand has taken inspiration from the candid aesthetic of paparazzi photos in a brand campaign. Last year, Italian fashion brand Bottega Veneta licensed images of rapper A$AP Rocky wearing the clothing brand taken by photo agencies Getty and Backgrid.
The ads even featured an image of a viral moment in which A$AP Rocky made a TMZ photographer Melanie Miller jog with him to get the shot — after which she reportedly became sick off-camera.
Image credits: All photos via Balenciaga.