The word on the High Street is that American Apparel is never very far away from bankruptcy – is that just a ploy to get more column inches, more PR or a genuine fact? “Dov Charney (head of American Apparel) is always one to court controversy, the advertising has always had elements of soft porn about it – but a recent one has stirred more online chatter than most.
The following copy is lifted directly from Fashionista
“Here, in an ad in Purple Magazine (go figure), unearthed by Copyranter, American Apparel advertises their sheer undies on a young model with her pubic hair prominently showing. Not that there’s anything wrong with not waxing it all off like it’s become de rigeur to do, of course, and really why is it that pubic hair makes everything so much more taboo? We checked in with Jessica Grose, managing editor of Slate’s women’s blog, Double X for her quick take on this.”
“Pubic hair is thought of as gross and undesirable now,” says Grose, “It used to just be titillating but now it is thought of as icky, or at least untamed, so it signifies something unruly, slightly gross and out of control…it’s a provocative ad.”
Of course – when Tom Ford was at Gucci, he was slightly bolder:
What are you feelings on it?