Professor Andrew Groves, Professor of Fashion Design, was quoted in an article by The Guardian about shock advertising and explicit fashion adverts.
In the article, Professor Groves spoke about the history of shock advertising, and how it is not a new phenomenon. He said: “Explicit fashion adverts can be traced back to 1980, when Calvin Klein marketed his jeans using a 15-year-old Brooke Shields.
“The more designers like Klein diffused their brand name into secondary, mass-market lines, the more they relied on controversial advertising to reach a wider consumer audience.”
He also said that Calvin Klein’s ads became more explicit as time went on: “reaching a nadir in 1995 with a TV commercial that seemed to be a screen test for a low-budget film. The audience’s viewpoint [was] that of the director behind the camera, so we are complicit as he asks the models about their bodies or tells them to take their clothes off. It’s easy to see why it was pulled.”
Read the full article on The Guardian’s website.
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