Balenciaga’s SS18 campaign is here, and it's shot with all the hallmarks of classic paparazzi footage: cropped-out faces and minders in leather coats, along with models that would do anything to get out of the photo. The only thing that sets the images apart from actual pap shots is that the models are blocking their faces with statement bags featuring charm bracelet straps, with their heads perfectly tilted to show off their heavy, graphic earrings.

Shot outside of the brand’s Rue Saint Honoré store in Paris by a press photo agency, the campaign gets meta when you notice that one of the models (just about recognisable as Stella Tennant) is also wearing a shirt printed with newspaper cuttings. Also notable is the fact that the images were released hour by hour, as if encouraging you to stay on Instagram hitting refresh, the same way you might do for news updates or celebrity gossip.

The campaign follows Balenciaga’s pre-fall menswear lookbook, which set the models against urban backdrops that were striking in their sheer mundanity; outfits were accessorised with pot-plants, laundry bags and electric scooters, as if its subjects had been photographed in the middle of running an errand.

The campaign follows in the footsteps of the Yeezy Season 6 lookbook, which recreated iconic paparazzi shots of Kim K not once, but twice – once with Kim herself, once with clone-style models in platinum-blond wigs. It seems fashion is embracing the glare of the paparazzi in 2018, as opposed to trying to escape it.