Calls for "porno chic" Saint Laurent ad campaign to be banned

Campaigners have accused the French fashion house Saint Laurent of featuring models in degrading poses for a publicity campaign they say should be banned.

The poster campaign in Paris consists of one image showing a reclining woman in a fur coat and fishnet tights opening her legs, and another of a model in a leotard and roller-skate stilettos bending over a stool. It has caused fury on social media.

The French advertising authority said most of the complaints were from people who saw the images as an “incitement to rape”. Its director, Stéphane Martin, said the brand appeared to have “incontestably breached” the rules.

“I am not sure that [Saint Laurent’s] female clients would like to be associated with these images,” he said. “We had a similar type of porno chic [in fashion advertising] a decade ago, and here we have it coming back again, which isn’t acceptable.”

sophiasept (@sophiasept)

@YSL Tout y est : culture du #viol, #soumission, #objectivation, #infantilisation invisibilisation et invitation à l’#anorexie ! pic.twitter.com/ozBDHQKtrL

March 4, 2017

Martin said they would decide on what action to take after a meeting with the label on Friday. The authority bars all “degrading and humiliating representations of people” and can demand that advertisers withdraw or change their campaigns.

France’s leading women’s group, Oséz le Feminisme! (“Dare to be Feminist!”), called for the campaign to be pulled, saying this was not the first time Saint Laurent had crossed the line.

It had previously raised hackles with another campaign that used “a very young hypersexualised woman”, its spokeswoman, Raphaëlle Rémy-Leleu, said.

She said this time the subtext was “extremely violent”. “It ticks all the sexist boxes. The women are objectified, hypersexualised and put in submissive positions,” she said.

“How do they think they will sell anything today to women with that? But you have to ask if that wasn’t intentional, that this was all about creating a scandal so we would talk about them.”

Saint Laurent was not available for comment.

Britain’s advertising watchdog banned a Saint Laurent advert two years ago that featured a model whose ribcage was showing.

Martin, who said the latest campaign had been created by the brand’s in-house team, questioned whether its new young designer, Anthony Vaccarello, had gone too far.

The Belgian creator has flirted with bad taste in his first two shows for the brand in which he radically ramped up the sex factor. In his latest show last Tuesday, he gift-wrapped models in tight shiny leather mini dresses while his debut collection featured a dress that exposed one breast.

“We have a rather young designer known for his rather ‘specific’ looks,” Martin said. It is possible that “in this rather closed world, with its specific codes, that they did not realise” the effect the adverts would have.

Calls for "porno chic" Saint Laurent ad campaign to be banned