The unique lineup of Anok Yai, Alton Mason & Nicolas Cage for Casablanca’s FW 2022 campaign deserves praise for ingenuity. The Paris-based founder of Casablanca Charaf Tajer leaves Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart nostalgia far behind, opting forward with an unrestrained embrace of modern-day Hollywood glamour for the fall 2022 campaign.

Indy actor Nicolas Cage purchased a Casablanca shirt at the Maxfield LA pop-up store — a fashion action that prompted Cage to develop a soft spot in his heart for the brand. Photographer Hugo Comte [IG], a close friend of the designer also loved the Cage connection, and the campaign rolled towards fruition, with styling by Helena Tejedor and art direction by Olivier Leone.

"Los Angeles is an important city for me, and I wanted to create a Hollywood moment between models I love, like Alton [Mason], who is a dear friend of mine, and Anok [Yai], who I truly love and think is one of the most beautiful women in the world. Then there's the icon that is Nicolas Cage. Hugo and I are also good friends, and we've wanted to work together for a long time, so this felt like the perfect time and place to do it." - Charaf Tajer, Creative Director.

This FW 2022 Campaign draws from Casablanca’s three main pillars of Architecture, Nature, and Travel. An important design, print and color influence in the new collection and campaign are the conceptual paintings of American artist Eric Fischl.

Wallpaper’s Coffee and Small Talk with Artist Eric Fischl

*The Exchange*, 2018, by Eric Fischl. *Courtesy of the artist and Sprüth Magers*

Wallpaper’s interview with American artist Eric Fischl — a source of inspiration for Casablanca’s FW 2022 Collection —was published online on June 24, 2019. The artist speaks then and now about the US political landscape, but he tapped then into a concept not discussed sufficiently about contemporary America.

It’s a critical subject to AOC, and this quote was made before the summer of 2020, when the public murder of George Floyd shook the souls of many Americans — and most Anne of Carversville readers in America and around the world.

Question by Wallpaper’s Bodil Blain, columnist and founder of Cru Kafé: How has the new US political landscape affected your work?

Over the last few years, since the election cycle that brought Trump into power, there has been an apotheosis of something that had been building for some time. It was something I just couldn’t get away from and needed to look at. Not from a political perspective, but looking at what’s happened to our dreams, our pride, our national mythologies – it’s an existential crisis more than a political one. It’s manifested itself in a political sense, but it has come out of the level of greed and consumption, the belief that the lifestyle that you procure, that you surround yourself with will protect you from what is actually happening.