There's a certain feeling you get when an image looks too clean. Too perfect. Too resolved. In 2026, that feeling often comes with a question underneath it. Was this made, or was this generated.

The latest campaign from Saint Laurent, starring Bella Hadid, leans deliberately in the opposite direction. Low-fi. Slightly rough. Visibly human. And because of that, it lands with more conviction than most high-gloss work circulating right now.

Shot by Glen Luchford, the campaign nods back to the early 2000s and the original Mombasa bag era. Grain's left in. Framing feels loose. The images don't try to perform perfection. They feel like they were pulled from an archive rather than engineered for an algorithm.

That's exactly why they work.

At a time when AI aesthetics are flattening visual culture into something strangely uniform, rawness has become a signal. Not nostalgia for its own sake, but proof of process. Proof of hands. Proof of decision-making happening in real time.

This isn't about rejecting technology. It's about recognising what audiences are learning to read between the pixels. When everything can be generated, the things that look slightly unresolved start to feel more trustworthy.

Saint Laurent's visual language has long played with vulnerability, intimacy, and discomfort. This campaign doesn't feel like a reaction to AI so much as a reminder of where the brand's always been comfortable sitting.

Bella Hadid's also a key part of why this lands. Not because of reach alone, but because she carries cultural memory. She's existed across eras of fashion imagery, from hyper-polished to deeply raw. Here, she isn't styled into distance. She's allowed to look present. Slightly exposed. Real.

For creatives, there's a clear lesson in this. The fastest way to signal humanity right now isn't to explain that something wasn't made with AI. It's to make work that'd be harder for AI to convincingly replicate. Work that carries friction. Work that leaves the seams visible.

Low-fi's no longer a fallback. It's a choice. One that says confidence lives in the process, not just the output.

Saint Laurent didn't need to shout about authenticity here. They simply showed it. And in a landscape crowded with synthetic perfection, that confidence feels like a very deliberate move.

Shot of the good stuff.