I found H&M’s last advertising campaign very refreshing; not only for the light and beach portrayed but for the male models they chose to wear the swimmear designs.
The models are Andrés Velencoso, one of the most famous Spanish models, and Ben Hill, an American model ranked amongst the top ten world models. Both are 33 years old and have worked for H&M before.
In the campaign images, Andrés and Ben appear with hair chest and, in Ben’s case, with some grey hair. What I like about this is that they look more natural and healthy than many of the models we are used to seeing lately. We shouldn’t forget that the images are clearly fashion-oriented; the location is perfect and the models are extremely handsome, but they look confident, masculine and quite relaxed.
In my opinion, the issue of thinness and youth is impacting the male model industry more and more, with well-known models losing weight – like Jon Kortajarena - and fashion houses and magazines choosing young and androgynous models, such as this model on the cover of Japanese Voge Homme:
We can already see that many male models face the same pressure over their weight as female models do. This is worrying as men have, until now, appeared to be less susceptible to pressure to be ultra-skinny, but the more pressure on models to be this thin, the more pressure ‘normal’ men may feel to look unhealthily thin .
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Post by Maria Llanos
Our voice from Spain! After graduating in Business Administration, María worked in marketing at L’oréal for almost 3 years. After this period, she decided to develop her creativity by studying an MA in Design Studies at Central Saint Martins, where she developed her thesis around the evolution of the ideal female beauty concept and got to know All Walks. Currently, María is working at a Communication agency in Madrid. Check out all her posts here, and on Twitter @merillanos.
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Editor Charlotte Gush, on Twitter @CavaCharlotte