Beyoncé and Jay-Z Are Madly in Love in Their Tiffany & Co. Campaign Video
Less than a month after Tiffany & Co. made waves (and then some) with the first look at its year-long mega-campaign with Beyoncé and Jay-Z, the luxury jeweler and power couple are back with more. The latest to result from “About Love,” which Tiffany & Co. describes as “the result of a close collaboration and a shared vision,” is an Emmanuel Adjei-directed video of Beyoncé serenading her husband with a rendition of “Moon River.” It starts out with Jay-Z clacking away on a typewriter, clearly pining for Beyoncé, who’s on her way back to him in a private plane. Once again, she’s sporting the Tiffany Diamond—a massive 128.54-carat stone that only three other women have ever worn in history. (A white coat with giant fur sleeves rounds out her casual travel attire.)
At long last, they reunite, at which point Beyoncé sits down at the piano to channel Audrey Hepburn, wearing a black dress updo while offering her take on Hepburn’s memorable performance of the song in the 1961 film song Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Jay-Z, clearly lovestruck, pulls out his Super 8 camera, which he in fact also uses in real life: The short also features footage that he shot of Beyoncé grinning and helping him pop the champagne. Equals Pi, a mysterious, rarely-seen 1982 painting by Jean-Michel Basquiat, again makes a cameo, hanging on a wall next to the grand piano. “It is a story of longing and reunion—a bond that transcends space and time,” Tiffany & Co. said in a press release.
The latest installment of “About Love” is certainly proving less controversial than the first. As the internet studied up on the Tiffany Diamond, some moved on from reveling in Beyoncé becoming the first Black woman to ever wear the stone to criticizing her for doing so, characterizing it as a “blood diamond.” (It was unearthed from the Kimberley mines in South Africa in 1877, when the country was under British colonial rule.) Meanwhile, there’s a whole separate outcry over Tiffany & Co. exec Alexandre Arnault venturing that Basquiat’s use of robin’s-egg blue was an “homage” to the jeweler. To the late painter’s former studio assistant, Stephen Torton, it was instead a “very perverse appropriation of the artist’s inspiration.” The first to ever own Equals Pi, Anne Dayton, agreed, going so far as to call it “blasphemy to even consider” that Tiffany & Co. was Basquiat’s inspiration.
None of that seems to have any effect on the Carters and Tiffany & Co.’s relationship, which continues to thrive. They’re currently at work on two more shorts, directed by Dikayl Rimmasch and Derek Milton, as well as branching out into philanthropy. Tiffany & Co. has teamed up with BeyGOOD and the Shawn Carter Foundation, pledging $2 million in scholarship funds for students at Historically Black Colleges and Universities, or HBCUs.
