Bar Refaeli Takes a Roll in the Hay for Agent Provocateur

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The latest Agent Provocateur marketing campaign breaks this week featuring Bar Refaeli as a barn girl reclining seductively on piles of hay — and not looking like she rose at dawn to milk the cows.
Shot by Sebastian Faena in the countryside outside Paris, the campaign is meant to conjure a hot summer mood and a love of the great outdoors.

Inspired by films including “Paris Texas,” “Stealing Beauty,” “The Virgin Suicides” and “Last Tango in Paris,” it is also the brand’s first campaign shot on location outside.

According to creative director Sarah Shotton, the team was expecting sunny weather but got cloudy skies, rain and cold instead.

“There we were in our North Face puffer jackets, hoping for some sun,” said Shotton, adding that Refaeli, instead, was in AP underwear.

“Thank God for Bar — she was a really good sport, waiting in the stables until the sun came out. And she is really hot — you can’t look like that and feel the cold.”

Shotton added that she chose the model for her “film noir, feline quality,” and for the synergy she had with the collection and Agent Provocateur.

Refaeli wears some of the key looks of the spring season, including a black, high-cut bodysuit in stretch chiffon with a built-in bra and suspenders, and a cropped camisole top with inner support, and miniskirt that can be worn as lingerie, pajamas or clothing.

Shotton said she’s seeing a trend for women wanting their lingerie to multitask and to have a sporty element, too. “They also want to show off our lingerie and are looking for something that is out of the ordinary.”
The campaign will be used online, in-store and at AP points of sale.

The British company is on a growth trajectory, with sales in the year ended March 29 up 36.2 percent to 53.1 million pounds, or $86.6 million, while earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, or EBITDA, rose by more than 50 percent to 9.6 million pounds, or $15.6 million.

Online sales were up 30 percent year-on-year, and international brick-and-mortar expansion continues to be a major focus.

Over the past seven years, Agent has expanded its offer to include a lower-priced line called L’Agent, which is designed by Penelope Cruz and her sister Mónica Cruz Sánchez.

The brand also has five fragrances with partners InterParfums.

Bar Refaeli In Trouble With Israeli Army

A pro-Israel advertisement featuring the model has sparked an angry response from her country’s military.

Bar Refaeli’s cameo in a pro-Israel ad campaign has the Israeli Defense Forces in a tizzy. The new commercial, launched by the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, promotes the country’s advanced technology and features an appearance by the Israeli model at the end.

IDF spokesman Brigadier General Yoav Mordechai drafted a letter to the Foreign Ministry on Sunday criticizing the decision to cast Refaeli in the ad because she never served in the Israeli army, a duty required by all Israeli women over the age of 18.

“I wanted to direct your attention to the negative message this sends to Israeli society by the use of Bar Refaeli, who did not serve in the IDF, as an official representative of Israel in a campaign abroad,” Mordechai wrote, according to The Jerusalem Post.

“In recent years, the IDF has been trying a variety of methods to improve the value of military service and to combat draft evasion in order to preserve the moral dimension whereby the IDF is the people’s army.”

This isn’t the first time Refaeli has been targeted by the IDF. She became the subject of criticism in 2007, when she briefly married a family friend to dodge military service (Israeli law exempts married women from serving in the army). Major General Avi Zamir was so peeved that he reportedly called a boycott of Refaeli-endorsed products. Refaeli came under fire again in 2010, when the AFP reported that she requested to be listed as a foreign resident of the country to avoid paying taxes.

The Foreign Ministry defended Refaeli in a statement in response to the IDF. “Refaeli is considered one of the most beautiful women in the world and is widely recognized as an Israeli,” the letter read. “There is no reason to bring up the past when it comes to a campaign of public diplomacy of this kind.”

Refaeli got involved in the squabble herself with a pair of near-identical tweets written in Hebrew. One reads, “Use the Foreign Ministry clip or not. My Instagram has more readers than the newspaper of the country. I will continue to focus,” and the other includes a photo of a political banner urging President Barack Obama to free Israel spy Jonathan Pollard.