BELVEDERE DIRTY BREW GETS A RAWER EDGE THROUGH PIERRE-ANGE CARLOTTI’S LENS

Looking for something coffee-based, dark, smooth? Perhaps you might want to look into Belvedere’s new Dirty Brew. Built around Belvedere Organic Vodka and roasted organic robusta coffee, the new spirit sits in a world of contrasts: polished yet undone, elegant yet with an edge, luxurious yet not too precious about itself. To capture that tension, Belvedere turned to Pierre-Ange Carlotti, launching a campaign that effortlessly encapsulates this balance between luxury and irreverence through the photographer’s unique visual language.

all images courtesy of BELVEDERE
photography by PIERRE-ANGE CARLOTTI

Rather than treating Dirty Brew as a glossy object under perfect light, Carlotti gives it a social world through a cinematic story set in a café-bar just before closing, where a group of friends linger in that familiar in-between moment when the night hasn’t quite ended, but it has definitely changed shape, and there’s a feeling that something is still about to happen.

For Carlotti, the campaign “was less of a shoot, and more of an invitation into a moment that felt too real to stage”. That idea sits at the heart of the images. Shot on phones, DV cameras, and CCTV-style footage, the campaign feels spontaneous, intimate, loose, and fun, without any try-hard feeling. There is still plenty of style, of course — it is still Belvedere, after all — just a lot more texture.

“I wanted it to feel like a night out with real friends”, Carlotti explains. “It’s unpolished, authentic, and completely real — a peek at the side of the night that usually stays behind the scenes”. There is no over-produced party fantasy here. Instead, the images lean into the messy and beautiful energy of nights that are remembered in flashes. “We didn’t light it like a set”, he says. “We lit it like a room that didn’t know it was being watched”. The result is a visual atmosphere built out of shadows, harsh flashes, reflections, and what he calls “imperfections, but the good kind.”

The casting plays a major role in making that world believable. Carlotti wanted the group to feel like they already knew each other, like the viewer had simply walked into an existing circle of friends. “It’s crazy”, he says, “because in reality they had never met before, yet the energy between them was palpable”. Instead of focusing solely on looks, the casting was built around energy, with street casting bringing in fresh, authentic personalities that made the chemistry feel less manufactured.

This is what lifts the campaign beyond a simple product announcement. Dirty Brew becomes less about a bottle and more about an attitude. Carlotti puts it simply: “I’ve always been drawn to the spaces where polish cracks, where things look perfect from a distance, but up close, you see the grit, the sweat, the smudge”. That spontaneous approach is very Carlotti. Through the campaign, he builds an atmosphere, a little intimate, a little chaotic, totally seductive.

Even the name Dirty Brew carries that same subversive logic. It nods to the “dirty coffee” technique of adding a shot of espresso to darken a pure liquid, turning something clean into something deeper, darker, and more decadent. Impurity made elegant.

The drink itself follows that idea closely: with its 30% ABV, it is organic-certified and features tasty notes of roasted coffee and dark toffee, with a velvety finish, making it quite the indulgent drink. The matte-black bottle with gold accents leans fully into luxury-object territory, but Carlotti’s campaign offsets that with enough roughness to keep it interesting.

That roughness also feels very now. “Right now, people crave authenticity, even if it’s curated authenticity,” Carlotti says. “We’ve reached a point where polish feels predictable. Everyone knows what perfect looks like. But the moment something’s a little off, it becomes human”.

Belvedere will mark the Dutch launch with an exclusive Club Dirty Brew event on June 11 at Five Ways Coffee Roasters, while Dirty Brew creations will also appear on menus at selected restaurants and bars across the Netherlands in June.

Yet Dirty Brew arrives as much more than that; through Pierre-Ange Carlotti’s lens, it presents a whole intimate visual world. Glamorous, dark, slightly undone, and subversively authentic.