Looking like a lady

Global – H&M’s new advertising campaign celebrates femininity in all its guises.

• The soundtrack is a cover of Tom Jones’s hit song She’s a Lady, sung by soul duo Lion Babe
• Actress Lauren Hutton, model Adwoa Aboah, transgender actress Hari Nef and Lion Babe’s Jillian Hervey all make appearances

H&M is seeking to redefine ladylike behaviour by depicting women in an assortment of everyday situations, from eating chips in bed to removing food from their teeth in a restaurant.

The ad is set to a new cover of She’s a Lady by Lion Babe, which subverts the song’s original misogynistic undertones by juxtaposing lines such as ‘she always knows her place’ with a woman heading up a boardroom meeting.

By featuring a diverse mix of women of all ages, racial backgrounds and body types, H&M seeks to show these women as individuals rather than fashion’s conventionally idealised images of femininity. In 2015 the brand released its Close the Loop campaign, which similarly stressed the importance of diversity by featuring models that closely reflected society at large.