In "Counterfeit Saints", photographer Jamie Nelson dissects society’s fixation on the luxury logo - where devotion to branding verges on religious worship. Collaborating with artist Dylan Egon, Jamie fabricated a series of faux Chanel artifacts: guns, armour, halos built from gold-plated switchblades, even microscopic Chanel “eye-boogers.” In contrast, stylist Anna Katsanis incorporated authentic Chanel pieces, creating a visual puzzle in which viewers are invited to guess what is real and what is counterfeit. The friction between the genuine and the faux becomes the conceptual engine of the work, exposing how a simple logo, cultivated over time, can hypnotise a culture.
The images oscillate between parody and reverence. In one, a woman’s eyes are veiled by dripping gold chains, her latex armour emblazoned with the interlocking Cs - a vision suggestive of both sanctity and submission. In another, a model stares defiantly down the barrel of a gold-plated Chanel revolver, the double C stamped where a serial number might be. Elsewhere, Jamie constructs an absurdist pantheon: a Chanel “Saint” crowned with a halo of knives, a nude figure wearing only Chanel nipple pasties, a face fully tattooed in the brand’s insignia.
Across skin, metal, and fabric, the relentless repetition of the Chanel logo becomes both mantra and critique. Jamie parodies the extremes of brand obsession and the lengths to which people will go to adorn themselves with symbols of status - spending exorbitant sums on anything touched by a fashion emblem, or even fantasising about objects that never existed in the first place.
“Counterfeit Saints” ultimately asks what remains when consumer devotion outpaces meaning. If luxury becomes liturgy and branding becomes belief, what happens when the illusion shatters - when we discover that the sacred objects were counterfeit all along? Perhaps the farce was the point: authenticity matters less than the faith we’re willing to give a logo.
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