By Jessica Frost
@jessicaxfrost
You’ve heard it before and in this day and age, it couldn’t be truer than true; sex sells.
Nearly every fashion brand will utilise the philosophy at one point or another whether they’re a grungy start-up or a luxury label selling to women in their mid 40’s. Everyone wants to feel good about themselves when they get dressed in the morning and a little bit of promiscuity tends to be a needed addition to achieve that even for the most modest dresser.
But is there a point where provocative and sexually charged advertising becomes inappropriate and dangerously steering closer into being classified immoral? Advertising after all is just a fancy word for selling and using sex to make a profit… well, I don’t know about you but that’s sounding kinda ‘Pretty Woman’ to me.
The reason I bring it up is because of an article I came across detailing the SS17 campaign for fashion brand Eckhaus Latta. In it, the models are having sex. Real-life-not-faked for the cameras, sex. The pictures are made PG13 with the help of strategic pixilation but it’s more than clear what’s going on in the images and I can’t help but wonder how exactly that campaign is selling me clothes?
Of course I’m also wondering whose idea was that? How’d they find models willing to have real sex? Did they know each other before hand? Did they get paid for it? Does getting paid for it make them kind of porn star-ish? What did their mother’s say?
We’re constantly toting the line these days between self- expression and inappropriateness so whilst one part of me is thinking that there’s nothing wrong with sex, a perfectly natural and healthy thing, the other part is thinking that it doesn’t seem right to be selling it to the world as a fashion campaign.
Maybe if it were an art project I’d be viewing it a little differently, but then again, I’d probably still be getting a flicker of a feeling telling me it’s less about creativity and an expression of nature than it is about causing a stir and using something so provocative to grab a headline and sell a t-shirt. Whatever your thoughts on it, you can’t doubt that it’s probably started a conversation or two and can that really be a bad thing?
