CULTURE

Please Enjoy This Hypnotizing Video of Shalom Harlow Dancing in Versace

The ’90s legend returns in a campaign also starring Bella Hadid and Irina Shayk.


Shalom Harlow
Courtesy Versace

Three months ago, supermodel Shalom Harlow made her first runway appearance in six years, closing the Versace Spring 2019 show. And now, she’s back again—this time, in the accompanying campaign for the season, which debuted Monday.

In the Steven Meisel-photographed image, Harlow stands mid-dance-step, clad in a floral and floral and striped bell-bottom jumpsuit and chunky platform sneakers; her hair is teased into an airy cloud of curls. And a short behind-the-scenes video Donatella Versace posted to her personal Instagram account shortly before the campaign debuted, the designer offers an extremely joyous inside look at how the photo came to be.

In the video, a stylist adjusts Harlow’s look as a fan begins to blow over her cascade of curls and a bouncy track begins to play—”Wordy Rappinghood,” by Tom Tom Club. As the stylist scurries to the wings, Harlow starts to dance, doing moves I’ve been told resemble the funky chicken. It’s absolutely transfixing. Hypnotizing. Inspiring. A real-life Infinite Jest. You can hear everyone standing around set cheering her on as she moves; even those who weren’t actually there chimed in in the comments. “Yesssss love this!!!!” Doutzen Kroes wrote, adding three fire emojis. Sasha Pivovarova simply added the explosion and clapping hands emojis, tagging Harlow and Versace. “Oh my….” Vittoria Ceretti wrote, accompanied by a heart-eyes emoji; Bella Hadid, who also stars in the campaign, January Jones, and He Cong also liked it. Harlow also posted it to her own account; “Feeling the Electrical Current Pulse,” she captioned.

But really, it was Donatella Versace’s caption that said the most: “Shalom serving us 200%!!” she wrote. “Brava @shalomharlow!”

Harlow, who, as one of the most sought-after models of the ’90s, starred in the finale of Alexander McQueen’s Spring 1999 show, entitled “No. 13,” was also a regular on the Versace runway (and on the cover of W) throughout the decade—she walked in the brand’s Spring 1996 show, for example, and again during the Spring 1997 couture show, when she stalked down the runway with Gianni Versace himself on her arm. But until September’s Versace “extravaganza,” she hadn’t walked a fashion show since 2012, when she appeared in Alexander Wang’s Fall 2012 show.

“Tonight will be maximalist,” Versace teased on her Instagram stories before the show. The same could be said for Harlow’s on-set moves.