<i>Oh la vache!</i>

Collective des Produits Laitiers

In America last year, the California Milk Processor Board wasted a serious amount of money and goodwill by hiring Goodby Silverstein, a San Francisco ad agency, to create a milk awareness campaign. Its content proved so offensive to women that it lasted all of 24 hours before being unceremoniously pulled from the market-place after a social media backlash. Goodby, of course, insisted the campaign worked because of the visibility it garnered, ignoring the resulting brand devaluation.
In France, they do it differently. The Collective des Produits Laitiers (think the National Milk Board) displays legendary fashion photographer Jean-Baptiste Mondino’s images of a dairy cow wearing classic couture headwear. The large-format prints can be seen in an installation at the collective’s ofﬁes in the 11th arrondissement. Besides being an inventive way to fuse the concepts of high fashion and dairy products, rest assured no animals were harmed in the making of these enjoyable and unusual photos. How did he get the cow to hold still for the session? The farmer tied a bucket to bossy’s head every day for a month to train it; all the hats were shot in a single day, 15 years ago. There’s also clever French exhibition catalogue text, written in the voice of the discriminating cow, courtesy of curator Claude Deloffre.—Stanley Moss, Travel Editor