City Of Angels

The prolific Jared Leto returns for Gucci Guilty’s next episode and opens up about the new campaign he fronts with Lana Del Rey, as well as his art of life, work and style

- Tan Siok Hoon

It’s not an easy task to describe Los Angeles. Unlike some cities that enchant at first sight, L.A.’s kind of beauty is strangely paradoxical — where the mainstream and off-kilter co-exist as strange bedfellows to create an irresistible and variegated whole. In a stealthy and seductive way, the place grows on you.

Though it was late fall, the season-defying California weather was all warm, blue skies and luminous sunshine in West Hollywood en route to Chateau Marmont for an interview with Jared Leto, on the eve of the Gucci Guilty party at Hollywood Forever Cemetery. After a smouldering turn in the 2016 #GuiltyNotGuilty campaign shot in Venice, co-starring models Vera Van Erp and Julia Hafstrom, the Oscar-winning actor and musician is reprising his role for the fragrance’s new chapter.

“Venice was magical and beautiful to be in the middle of winter… desolate,” he says. “The campaigns are very different — one is very sensual and provocative, and the new one is more free-spirited with a sense of adventure, playfulness and nostalgia.”

Making her Gucci Guilty debut with Leto in the new #ForeverGuilty campaign set cannily in La-La Land is multi-platinum singer-song writer Lana Del Rey. Los Angeles denizens in real life, the protagonist pair frolic across the city’s lush and saturated landscape in the short video, channelling spontaneity and uninhibition while enjoying a natural connection in their own unconventional and eccentric ways.