Agent Provocateur's Seedy Autumn/Winter 2017 Campaign Walks A Trumpian Line In 'Tease & Hustle'

The always racy Agent Provocateur lingerie brand returns to its seedy, '90s roots in London's Soho district with its 'Tease & Hustle' campaign. Leading ladies Elise Crombez, Magdalena Frackowiak and Abbie Fowler as the “cloakroom girl” are lensed by Anton Corbijn - a film director, music-video producer, and photographer all rolled into one, who is behind films such as Control, The American and A Most Wanted Man. Corbijn cements the close relationship between the AP girl and music culture with Massive Attack’s “Pray For Rain” as the lead track throughout.

Agent Provocateur's creative director Sarah Shotton considers the campaign to be an extension of the brand's female empowerment positioning, although the campaign's 'Tease & Hustle' name puts it into the return of the alpha males trend in a post-Trump era.

In the real world of America daily life, Secy of Education Betsy Devos announced last week a re-examination of sexual assault directives on America's university campuses, rolling back Obama-era rules. 

From all I've read, some revisiting of campus sexual assault procedures may be in order, but fundamental to the change is a core belief among young men that large numbers of women are all about 'Tease & Hustle'. Instead of owning their sexual empowerment, they cry 'rape' when they wake up the morning after a drunken, frat party orgy unable to remember how they ended up in soiled sheets.  The alpha male movement in America is strongly committed to a rollback of feminism and this campaign helps to examine their core argument.

It's Trump's Brit friend Nigel Farage who claimed that the alpha males are back after Trump literally stalked Hillary Clinton onstage at the second 2016 presidential debate.  Farage also celebrated Trump as a silverback gorilla, and I've had plenty of writing fun, comparing silverbacks and bonobos. See links after images. 

I'm no prude when it comes to sexual empowerment, having written and consulted about this theme for a decade and working as the fashion director for Victoria's Secret in its heyday. And I do see the empowerment argument in the campaign video. But let's agree it's raunchy empowerment that plays directly into the male gaze at a time when white, working-class men especially see Trump as their great leader. And we all know Trump believes that men can grab women's privates whenever they like. 

Yes, the ladies close the drapes to the stares and lecherous, money-waving jeers of ogling men in 'Oops' with the sexy declaration that they have their own night's fun in mind. Is this Agent Provocateur campaign really about female empowerment -- or is it trapped in the wrong decade? ~ Anne