AMI Paris Puts Catherine Deneuve Behind the Counter of Its Place des Victoires Shop for Ami d'Hiver

AMI Paris has cast Catherine Deneuve as a shop manager. The brand's holiday campaign, Ami d'Hiver, went out on November 4 with a dateline from Paris, and its short films put Deneuve behind the counter of AMI's boutique at 4 Place des Victoires, which opened in June, greeting customers, giving advice in the fitting room and tying the ribbons on the gifts, according to the brand's release. Loïc Prigent, the fashion journalist and documentary maker, directed it.

AMI calls Deneuve "a longtime friend of Ami Paris" on its campaign page, and plays the films for laughs: small, odd moments from ordinary holiday shopping. The brand teased it on November 3 with a reel of "an unexpected face" behind the counter, then followed with a fitting-room film the next day, captioned "In Catherine Deneuve's fitting room, not every look makes the cut."

AMI Paris

The collection

The clothes are the season's festive line, which the release says is already on sale at AMI boutiques worldwide and on its online store. It's built on big coats and soft knitwear made to layer, finished with gloves, knit hats and scarves, and there's a kids' line too. The release centres the story on the Ami de Cœur symbol, and says the collection's yellow jumper comes from a memory of Alexandre Mattiussi, AMI's founder and creative director: on his first day of school he wore a polo shirt with a little yellow bow tie. AMI's US campaign page prices the long belted coat in beige goat leather at $5,070.

The credits on AMI's posts name Valentin Hennequin as photographer and Barbara Loison as stylist. The release adds a second chapter, a series of portraits by Bruno Staub on a snowy Place des Victoires, with more photography by Louis de Roffignac.

Our read

This is a shop promotion dressed up as a holiday campaign. Every film is set in the boutique AMI opened on Place des Victoires in June, across the square from its headquarters, so the shop gets as much screen time as the clothes. Prigent, whose documentaries have followed the fashion business from the inside, is a natural fit for the humour the release says his films bring to holiday shopping, and putting one of French cinema's most famous faces to work at the till gives AMI a story people will share. The clothes get more room in the second chapter, Staub's portraits on a snow-covered Place des Victoires.