Lamborghini's 'Snowball' Gives Competitive Masculinity a Fun New Playbook

Plus Nike and Miu Miu in our weekly roundup of European greats

Here’s a work that gave us some surprising post-holiday mirth. Created for Lamborghini by Libera Brand Building in Italy, “The Snowball” features a man who stops his wintry yard work to admire the Lambo of a guy across the way. But when both men meet eyes, things get competitive and weird, an electric energy illustrated by memories of boys bullying each other and flinging snowballs.

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Animated by this burgeoning trauma, our protagonist chucks a snowball at the car and prepares for impact when its owner notes the aggression and begins to approach. A woman watches while the toxic masculinity ramps up. She feels like both flag-girl and prize. This entire scenario feels familiar and gross. The Lambo owner raises a fist … and what he does next turns the situation into something else.

Chaos makes cosmos, we thought to ourselves. Volatility increases possibilities. Things don’t have to end badly just because we expect them to.

According to Libera, this is about how one positive choice—even in a universe of easier negative ones—can make a difference. The ad punctuates that with its ending: “All choices lead you somewhere, but only a few take you beyond.” This is a useful illustration of that. Lamborghini—the real trophy here—is neatly placed at the center of what turns out to be a bromantic meet-cute. It’s a surprising choice for Lambo, whose reputation once thrived on masculine jostling. It opens a different path for the future of the brand, but also for how men can be men.

The Paris 2024 Olympics have come and gone, but people still talk about it. People still think about it. It was an idyllic, galvanizing time. We won’t see anything like it for a long time. To keep the hype alive, and tell stories we haven’t yet heard, Nike partnered with PI Studios and SRAB Films to create a feature: “Crois Pas Qu’on Dort” (“Don’t Think We’re Sleeping”). Set to go live in France on 500 screens this week, the work follows three young athletes as they prep for their big moments.

Here’s a trailer:

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You’ve got all the typical Nike tropes about triumphant hard work, character-shaping discipline and pursuing your vision in the face of critique. But this is also a series of stories about not being stereotypically “French”—coming from a minority group, an immigrant family, a colonized class or just from the suburbs of Paris. It’s about transcending that sense of social and political isolation and becoming something bigger than yourself … in this case, a representative for your country and what it stands for.

It’s a uniquely French story. It’s also a story for our generation and an act of hopeful subversion in increasing xenophobic times.

It’s the Year of the Snake—a creature that’s wise but cunning, deeply associated with women and invariably chic. So, for Chinese New Year, Italian brand Miu Miu tapped filmmaker Shujun Wei to shoot “The Encounte.” The work—pleasingly short for a luxury brand film—features two girls who magically find themselves alone in Yi Lau Yi, a retro Cantonese tea house. They set to making the place their own, fixing smoothies, jamming and dancing.

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What makes this work cool is its code-shifting subtlety. Miu Miu’s handbags, currently seeing a resurgence, are robust, streamlined pieces. Here they adorn younger women who play with old-school codes in distinctly Gen-Z ways: festooning them with playful charms à la Jane Birkin, and wearing pearl necklaces half-out of shirt collars, tucked under big thermal sweaters. China’s youth scene has a sharp, playful energy, with their own take on artifacts and styles of the past. But they, and the brand, are also unselfconscious about how nice things fit into their lives.

We’re a far cry here from upperclass ennui and chic, exclusive settings in which luxury bags can usually be found. We’ve also come a long way from the days when “classy brands” like Cristal expressed bemusement at hip-hop icons co-opting their carefully curated identities.

We’re in a time when luxury is seeing a slump, expected to get worse—and a time when people are getting more creative at mashing up sartorial codes and increasingly shopping second-hand for previously inaccessible goods. It’s a time for Walmart Birkins and getting less angsty about dupes.

This is a smart and appropriately snake-chic move: Miu Miu changing its skin without changing its form. It wants fresh clientèle, and celebrates the idea that, as a result, its bags may appear in surprising, playful places.

Miuccia Prada designed this brand so she could have a place to express who she is, as opposed to Prada, an inherited family legacy.

We like what we’re seeing of her here. We can relate to this Miu Miu.