Nick Knight Captures Naomi Campbell For Equinox Hotel Manhattan Debut | Campbell Headlining FORBES WOMAN AFRICA Summit on March 8

Supermodel Naomi Campbell is celestial and surreal in Nick Knight’s tantalizing images for the first Equinox Hotel in Manhattan. The fitness chain’s maiden forray into the hospitality business is marketed under the mantra ‘For Those Who Want It All’.

"I’m interested in how people represent health, because it tends to be one of those areas that doesn’t perhaps get as much creative treatment as it deserves," Knight said of taking on the project. "When Equinox approached me, I looked at what they’ve done in the past and thought, Here’s a company who say they want to push boundaries, and it’s for people who are constantly on the edge, but let’s look back through their advertising. And their advertising was exciting. They take risks. That’s the sort of thing you need to look at when you take on a new client."

The campaign, produced in Knight’s SHOWstudio, comes in three parts, each based on a different brand plank for Equinox hotels: movement, nutrition, and regeneration. Campbell appears in each segment in a mirrored room, built to be the size of an average hotel room. "I didn’t want to do anything where the imagery felt preachy," Knight said of conceptualizing the video. "I’d much rather stimulate people with the image that I make, rather than lecture them." Of course, the high-concept nature of the campaign was not without its challenges. "It was all shot in a mirrored cube, and that was a challenge in itself, because she’s surrounded by her own image, which is for her a slightly odd moment," Knight said. "But because of the mirrored cube, she also couldn’t see me at all, so we had to put microphones inside the mirrored images so she could hear what I was saying. It was a bit like the voice of God."

Naomi Campbell for Forbes Woman Africa

Naomi has a major stop in South Africa next month, where she will headline this year’s FORBES WOMAN AFRICA Leading Women Summit, hosted by KwaZulu-Natal Provincial Government, taking place at Durban’s Inkosi Albert Luthuli International Convention Centre on International Women’s Day – Friday, 8 March.

Naomi Campbell Model Archives @ AOC