>> Fashion houses tended toward casting celebrities or established, "pretty" faces for their Fall 2009 campaigns, and it sounds like despite the fact that the Spring 2010 runways were flooded with new faces — because so many established models were sitting it out — Spring 2010 campaign season will bring more of the same.  In an interview published today, Nick Knight tells the Independent UK:

"My aim has always been to push at the boundaries of what is and isn't beautiful. Instead of our perception of beauty opening up, it's becoming more narrow all the time. To make money, the industry is increasingly catering to the lowest common denominator and, as far as the people who run the big companies are concerned, anything even slightly out of the ordinary frightens people. But anyone with a brain knows that it is the quirkiness and imperfection in a person that attracts other people. That is completely obvious to human beings; it's just when it gets to a corporate level that it all falls apart."

So what of those new faces? »

>> For Spring 2009 more than ever, brands stuck with campaign models who guarantee a sell — supermodels like Gisele Bundchen and Kate Moss for Versace or Claudia Schiffer for Yves Saint Laurent, Daria Werbowy for Roberto Cavalli — or the classic blonde hair-blue eye combination that Toni Garrn and Anna Maria Jagodzinska's campaign sweeps represented.  Also of note for the season, Prada and Balenciaga's decisions to go with big groups of models — eight and ten, respectively.

With Fall 2009 campaign season under way, it sounds like at least a couple of brands have decided to break from that latter part of last season's formula — Wayne Sterling of The Imagist reports:

"It is too early to say and too tenuous to reveal who's holding/confirming what these days but rest assured it is the striking and the extreme that seem to be filtering into the next phase. Among the buzz I picked up by some art directors is a disenchantment with the 'multiples' ideal, that concept of an army of models rocking as many of the looks from the show as possible while waving as many possible it-bags as can be crammed into a double page. Two VERY big brands have already gone 'Only Girl.'"

The most likely candidate from that description of packing the models in seems to be Prada — so does that mean Prada is one of those already-decided brands, and Miuccia's current favorite exclusive Ymre Stiekema is going to finally get a main season campaign under her belt?

Who else is already being pinpointed? »