DUBAI: Model Mona Tougaard is among the leads of Chanel’s revived Coco Crush campaign, a cinematic game of hide-and-seek staged at Hollywood’s storied Chateau Marmont. The film was released this week.
At the heart of the campaign is Coco Crush itself, reintroduced a decade after the fine jewelry line first launched in 2015. The new pieces included a choker, a short necklace, two-tone earrings, pave bracelets and a sculptural cuff, reworking the quilted “matelasse” motif — the diamond quilting drawn from Coco Chanel’s designs — that runs as a signature through the house’s codes.
Tougaard and her castmates wore the jewelry throughout the film, which turned the hotel’s corridors and hidden rooms into a playground, where the collection’s “territory of encounters” became a playful chase.
Directed by American image-maker Gordon von Steiner, the film cast Tougaard opposite two of the house’s musician ambassadors: South Korean singer Jennie, a member of the K-pop group Blackpink, who played the seeker, and American singer-songwriter Gracie Abrams, newly named Chanel’s fine jewelry ambassador, as the elusive hider. Models Lulu Tenney, Akon Changkou, Mathilda Gvarliani and Ye Riqun rounded out the cast.
Chanel marked the Coco Crush launch with a dinner at the Chateau Marmont, where Abrams, Jennie and Tougaard were joined by guests including British singer Lily Allen.
Tougaard, whose mother is Somali-Ethiopian and father half-Turkish, half-Danish, started modeling after winning Elite Model Look Denmark at 15. She opened her career as a Prada exclusive in 2019 and has since walked for nearly every major house, from Chanel and Dior to Versace and Saint Laurent.
She was nominated for Model of the Year at the 2024 Fashion Awards and has appeared on the covers of British and Italian Vogue, becoming one of the industry’s most in-demand faces.
In July, she fronted Saint Laurent’s summer campaign, “Respiro,” alongside French-Algerian model Loli Bahia — a shoot the house called a “visual love letter to the French Riviera.” Its name, Italian for “breath,” captured the languid, sun-soaked mood.
It was shot against the sea and sun-bleached rocks of the French coast. The two had worked together before, starring side by side in Versace's spring/summer 2025 campaign.
