On Display: Carine Roitfeld-Styled Mercedes-Benz Ad

ON THE ROAD: Carine Roitfeld is a seasoned fashion stylist but her collaboration with Mercedes-Benz, for which she was behind the key visual for this season, presented her with a new challenge “because it was the first time that the car was the main model,” she said.

Roitfeld’s visit to the German capital, where the images were on display for a few hours on Thursday, had an element of nostalgia.

“My father was raised in Berlin, and I feel something in my stomach every time I come here,” she said. “It’s a special place.”

Harper’s Bazaar creative director and V magazine founder Stephen Gan worked with Roitfeld to direct the campaign and spoke highly of the young lesser-known German photographers Max von Gummpenberg and Patrick Bienert, who shot it.

“It was great to work with them because that is exactly what fashion should always be about: the juxtaposition between the new and the established,” said Gan. Despite spending “a lot of time on the set with the car,” Gan never took the new Mercedes S-class for a test drive.

“Carine is actually a great driver, but I don’t drive,” he confided. “So I just got to sit in it and admire the interior.”