Women used to throw their undies onto the stage when Tom Jones performed in his heyday. The Forsman & Bodenfors creatives may have been unaware of this when they chose to rework his song, She’s a Lady, as the theme for their new H&M campaign, #Ladylike. A bunch of older women will smile at the allusion. And H&M should by now be happy that older women are watching its ads. The fashion industry has already caught on to the fact that its market isn’t entirely Millennial.

The ad for H&M’s Autumn 2016 collection is about women being real women. About women using a knife to check their teeth, eating hot chips in bed, having hair armpits and wobbly tummies.

Promoting real women – and women who don’t care what the world thinks of them – is not a ground-breaking idea, especially for a fashion brand these days. But Forsman & Bodenfors has done it with a very pleasing lighter touch. Shame about the two women kissing cliché though.

The ad, which was directed by Gustav Johansson and set to Lionbabe’s cover of She’s a Lady, has come out at about the same time as Georg Jensen’s ad using strong professional women instead of models – also by F&B. It was perhaps not the intention of either campaign, but the coincidence of these two ads may well accelerate the progress of women’s journey (and in particular their adland journey) into a new normal, where brands don’t feel they have to teach them to like themselves – because this time, this decade, we really have come a long way, baby.

Forsman & Bodenfors: Georg Jensen validates role models not fashion models

The H&M ad features 70s (through 90s) model Lauren Hutton; Lionbabe singer, Jillian Hervey; transgender actress, Hari Nef; and model Adwoa Aboah.

H&M is asking people to share the film with their views on what being #Ladylike means to them. That should help F&B to amp up its ad’s reach.