Sydney Sweeney has saved advertising

Spectator

28-07-2025

I'm only surprised it's taken so long. And that anyone could possibly be surprised by it. 'Beautiful girl appears in ad campaign for fashion brand' is hardly a revolutionary concept and yet, since Sydney Sweeney appeared in a new campaign for American Eagle and lit up the internet, there's been quite a lot of confected surprise, shock and outrage. How could a brand use a beautiful woman to sell jeans in 2025? The question they should be asking is how could this not happen?
The reason the American Eagle ad is unusual is that in recent years the advertising industry, once famed for its glamour and beauty, has been colonised by pompous, po-faced pearl-clutchers. Now a new generation of advertisers is finally rebelling against the stifling sanctimony of their elders. They've grown tired of brands pretending to be holier than thou, more socially aware than thou in their disingenuous attempts to be more profitable than thou. Let's face it, customers were never looking for the Co-op to solve climate change or for Maltesers to tackle the issue of post-natal depression. A return to common sense and clarity of purpose was long overdue.
So Sydney Sweeney selling jeans in such a simple, clear and stylish way may well appal the pompous, joyless old guard of advertising but it's cheered and delighted the rest of us. This is how advertising always used to work: it used truth, beauty, humour and intelligence to sell things.
The Levi's ads of the 1980s were a perfect example. This forgotten and deeply unfashionable brand were practically dead and buried until BBH enlisted Nick Kamen and the then-unknown Brad Pitt to put them on (and take them off) during the ad breaks. Ditto Diet Coke. It was seen as weak and unappealing before a hench looking hunk removed his shirt to enjoy a can, ogled by a gaggle of office workers.
And yet for years, we've been told that people would rather see themselves reflected on screen, no matter how out of shape and let's just say, 'plain' they are. This is not true and never has been. I can think of few things worse than seeing someone who looks like me on screen because – especially when I was younger – it would have denied me that feeling of aspiration so vital to the success of a fashion brand. I was never mistaken in the street for Nick Kamen or Brad Pitt and yet I remember that great feeling of glamour-by-proxy that came with my first pair of 501s.
This is how advertising works. And for American Eagle, it's working brilliantly. Sydney Sweeney is selling so much denim that their share price has leapt 15 per cent, adding around $400 million to the value of the company. Making her the face and body of the brand was a stroke of genius.
American Eagle's most ferocious critics know this and it's driven them to derangement. Because the endline of the ad simply says 'Sydney Sweeney has great jeans' and 'jeans' is a pun on 'genes', there are mad people online making quite disgraceful comments. Sidney Sweeney is white, they claim, so this is a campaign, not for jeans, but for white supremacy. These claims are so vile, they're almost laughable but they typify a miserable movement in its death throes.
If Sydney Sweeney and American Eagle herald advertising's return to wit, beauty and actually selling things, everyone reading this should say 'Hip Hip Hooray!' The industry will once again attract smart, funny and creative people who'll restore its social significance and cultural clout.
But don't think for a moment that I adore these ads because I think Sydney Sweeney is sexy. Please – she's the same age as my daughter. Nope, for me, far the sexiest thing in this whole campaign is the 1966 Ford Mustang GT350 she drives away in.