I don’t know what some creatives have rattling around in their heads. AGL—Attilio Giusti Leombrini—is an Italian luxury brand. They make shoes and handbags, all handcrafted. They’ve been doing it since 1958. They’re as old as the Cuban Revolution. Which also has a shoe stuck on its head. AGL blends old‑school leatherwork with contemporary design. The company is now run by three sisters. Third generation. Probably with an iron fist. Sara, Vera, and Marianna—the kind of women nobody dares to contradict, nobody dares to hold eye contact with. Odds are, they keep their focus. On fine hides, on a saporito panettone di Milano, on an afternoon Amarone della Valpolicella.

Chances are, they didn’t even glance at this campaign. Let’s assume it’s brilliant, that it trades in codes only the truly wealthy understand. That the shoes are so expensive the message leaps right over the heads of the working class—and even the middle class. Would that still make it a good message?

The first thing I notice is the photo looks a little grimy. As if shot in low light with a sensor prone to noise. It’s not the magazine—other pages are flawless. The model, while managing a certain dignity, looks entirely focused on keeping that shoe from sliding off her head. Her gaze fixes on the vertical like a Tibetan monk. The other shoe, on her right, points the opposite way. A little Chaplin moment. Her look is proud, but also seems to warn the photographer: wrap this up already. The pose feels forced, artificial.

I can’t make heads or tails of the rest of the scene. Nothing. Center stage, the company’s initials—AGL—in caps, in an ultralight Sans Serif. The whole thing reeks of pretension. I keep circling back to that shoe on her head. I’ve just finished frying up some sea bass fillets and a few cod fritters. I’ve got a perfectly innocent mashed potato ready to go. What exactly am I missing here?

The ad is from a Dutch magazine, November 2021. Back then I was in exile in Naples, my own future looking as absurd—or more so—than this ad. That little model is doing her job. I have to admit it, I’m impressed. She looks like a southern Italian, maybe Neapolitan. And she seems to be telling me, straight through the page: Are you an idiot or what?