He likes what he sees. He thinks of the fabulous day ahead, but before stepping out he grows serious. At his level, you don’t have too many friends. Oliver is an Austrian jewelry designer—and that detail matters. When you step outside here, you tread on two millennia of cultural wealth. Under the Habsburgs, in the 18th century, this city counted citizens like Mozart, Schubert, and Beethoven. In the 19th, Strauss II. In the 20th, Gustav Klimt. Enough to drive anyone mad. And for the mad: Sigmund Freud.

Oliver breathes all of that in on his way to the studio. He’s a renowned jewelry designer: he does whatever he wants. He doesn’t mingle with mediocrity. One look at his face and you see someone who’s punted the can down the road. The guild recognizes his exquisite craftsmanship and his bespoke designs. What he loves most are engagement rings, wedding bands. He’s no fool—he knows someone in love will pay anything for a smile.

As you’d expect, Oliver is also a raging perfectionist. He has to uphold his personal myth. A story he tells himself in his idle hours, polishing and layering it. He’s prouder of it than his mother and grandmothers combined. Those inner monologues happen in German—a language that doesn’t indulge in nonsense. When you design in German, you get Mercedes, Audis, Porsches.

And to be nearly perfect, you must have some weakness. You must allow yourself a touch of softness, because that makes you palatable—fit for social consumption. A dog. Not a little mutt like mine, my tragic Shih Tzu. A Spanish greyhound that someone must groom daily.

So why not make an ad that tells all of this at once? That proves that beyond crafting exquisite necklaces, I can hang one on a dog’s neck. An image that carries all the good in one frame, that sparks sympathy, and most of all, lifts me like a fly that fell asleep on a weather balloon. But I don’t want to appear in the picture—and yet I have to. We’ll figure it out.

This advertisement, in my opinion and to my taste, is simply perfect. Nothing’s superfluous. In a single image it condenses two thousand years of a proud city, the aristocracy of blood, good taste, enduring wealth, love in German—profound and inscrutable. Black and white. Drama, heavy drama. Perfect and cold.

Auf wiedersehen.