Valentino’s Fall/Winter 2012-13 Ad Campaign video reminds me of references to a combination of two literary masterpieces: the magical wardrobe in the first chapter of The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, and Through the Looking Glass (the sequel to Alice in Wonderland).

Here’s why: The lone Valentino-clad model opens a wardrobe door and is greeted with the sight of an alternative world: Valentino’s opulent secret chamber where all the ladies are dressed to the nines in Valentino. They seem return the voyeur’s (the model who’s looking in) gaze, yet they don’t realise that they are being watched from the outside. The video ends with her closing the wardrobe door.

I really can’t help but to notice that this video deals with power relations on so many levels. Foucault’s panopticon comes to mind. On the first level, it seems as though the voyeur is the most powerful because she sees everything going on in the inner sanctum through the wardrobe, when in fact it is us, the audience (not the voyeur) watching the video is the most powerful because not only do we see the inner sanctum through the wardrobe, but we also are privy to the voyeur spying on the others, whom, at the end, too, returns our gaze looking a little scared, wondering if she has been caught. In short, the audience is the one who has the ultimate power.