Italian advertising watchdog IAA has banned a recent Tom Ford advertisement in Italy, describing the advertisement as “vulgar” and “sexually implicit”.
In advertising the brand’s sunglasses, the advertisement shows a woman biting a man’s middle finger.
Other advertising images can be viewed on the Tom Ford website, with the statement “sexually explicit images”, and include repeated scenes of naked women.
The IAA has apparently said that the images insult women and are offensive to everyone’s dignity.
While the Tom Ford site sings the praises of the man’s charisma and design instinct, the campaign begs the question as to how relevant sex or nudity is to sunglass advertising, and how prepared Italian women are to further accepting sex in their advertising.
After controversy over a Dolce and Gabbana ad in 2007, you would have thought designers had learned their lesson.
But it appears that while sex offends, it also sells, and there have been no particular cases of people boycotting a brand over its advertising campaign.
And perhaps in the city of fashion, anything goes, as passing through Milan central station recently, I was struck by another Dolce and Gabbana ad, which, while all the models are dressed, appears to suggest a grand orgy and is modestly plastered over one entire wall of the train station.