The Dumbest Fashion Ads Of The 21st Century
Let's celebrate Fashion Week season. Stupidly.
Pretty much all fashion advertising is dumb. Always has been. Always will be. Exactly one fashion ad sticks in my head as great: the classic Chanel Egoiste commercial.
But this century? Yeah-Nah.
TOM FORD
Tom Ford strove so HARD to be the EDGIEST fashion brand. He STROKED his ego raw to cum up with the raciest visuals ever created. He transformed his cologne bottle into a cock (above, should have made it more phallic tomboy). He gave a literal FUCK YOU to the hoi polloi establishment to sell sunglasses (sigh, yes the finger is a penis). Ads scanned from Vanity Fair.
DIESEL
In 2010, super-edgy Italian brand Diesel launched a campaign tagged '“BE STUPID”, featuring Millennials doing stupid things like flashing a security camera and being killed by wild animals. “Stupid” here is of course code for “cool”. Real World check: paying $330 for jeans is stupider. Posters via NYC subway. Ad agency: Anomaly NYC.
Flash-forward to now and Diesel’s online campaign for their popular “D-Bag”. Somewhere, “pioneer” Tom Ford is jerking off (to the left image).
Perry Ellis
In 2006, old man brand Perry Ellis started running a serial-comic campaign in national newspapers featuring a dude (maybe named “Perry” or “Ellis”) scoring chicks and just being fucking cool. He had a hot blonde girlfriend but other hot girls gave him “fuck-me eyes” at bars. This was his life philosophy:
“The secret to my professional success is that I relish challenges—I see a problem as just another opportunity for a solution. So I figured, why not apply this to my personal life?”
If you’re waiting for the twist or humorous irony, there was none. I only scanned one of the amazingly awful ads (New York Times) and fortunately you can’t find more of them online.
Kate Spade
DEAD IS THE NEW BLACK. This print ad featuring a maybe-dead woman in stylish shoes was pre-Spade suicide. It’s from 2005, scanned from Vogue. It certainly is a smart layout for selling footwear and avoiding “face” fashion model fees.
Wrangler
About a year before Diesel’s Be Stupid, Wrangler launched WE ARE ANIMALS (below), which was basically the exact same campaign, sans humor—you could even interchange the taglines: WE ARE STUPID; BE ANIMALS. The TV spot (above) implored us to “STOP THINKING” (and buy Wrangler jeans). Ad agency: Fred & Farid, Paris.
Duncan Quinn
Lastly, two ads from 2008-09 via “bespoke men’s suits” seller Duncan Quinn. Above: got your attention, right? Fake-strangling a woman in scanty-wear will do that. Below: a year later, Duncan (that’s not him in the ads) doubled-down on the misogynist asshole vibe with a sawed-off shotgun. Brand was briefly popular with Wall-Streeters, unsurprisingly. Both ads scanned from City magazine.
It’s amazing that fashion brands who target women approve sexist, violent ad concepts. Puts a whole new spin on #metoo.