By now, a couple of 2016 holiday ads have dropped, like Burberry's cinematic festive trailer, for example. These short films from leading retailers are created to fill us with Christmas cheer (and encourage us to spend all our cash, too). Today, H&M unveiled its holiday commercial, and it might be the best of the season, thanks to a collaboration with one of our favorite film visionaries. This year, the Swedish clothing giant has enlisted film director Wes Anderson to create a stylish short entitled Come Together, and it's filled with his signature aesthetic, all wrapped up in H&M knitwear.
Anderson has a long history of collaboration with the fashion industry. In 2007, Marc Jacobs, then the creative director at Louis Vuitton, designed period luggage for The Darjeeling Limited, taking inspiration from the fashion house’s archives. In 2013, Wes Anderson partnered with Prada on an 8-minute short, Castello Cavalcanti; the following year Miuccia Prada collaborated again with the cult director, on costumes for The Grand Budapest Hotel.
In this 4-minute film, Adrien Brody (who's a regular in Anderson's films) stars as a train conductor on the H&M Lines Winter Express, who manages to salvage Christmas after a blizzard delays the train’s arrival, causing passengers to miss part of their festive plans.
"The winter train ride, under Wes Anderson's direction, is the perfect setting for H&M's holiday collection full of relaxed, wearable elegance," Pernilla Wohlfahrt, H&M's head of design and creative director said in a release. "It's about mixing the informal with a sense of occasion, capturing the holiday mood for both dressing up and getting cozy with loved ones."
"This story may resonate more than ever at a time in the world where we could all do with giving a stranger a hug," Brody said in the release. This year's campaign contrasts pretty starkly with the brand's ads, in which Katy Perry played a glittery fairy joined by dancing gingerbread men.
Check out the full festive video, below.
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