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Saint Laurent ordered to remove ‘degrading’ porno chic ad posters

France's advertising regulator has ordered fashion house Saint Laurent to remove posters of extremely thin female models in "degrading" poses after an outcry over their appearance around Paris.

Published: 8 March 2017 11:36 CET

Saint Laurent ordered to remove 'degrading' porno chic ad posters

Photo: Twitter: screenshot

The campaign features 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.

Stephane Martin, head of advertising regulator ARPP, told AFP Tuesday that his organisation had received 120 complaints over the way the posters depicted women.

The authority bars all “degrading and humiliating” representations of people.

Martin told AFP earlier this week the brand appeared to have “uncontestably 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,” Martin added.

It has written to Saint Laurent asking them to “stop the use of these images, to withdraw them or to change them,” Martin said, explaining that a more detailed assessment of the campaign would be made on Friday.

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

The latest campaign was created in-house by Saint Laurent, which is under new young Belgian designer Anthony Vaccarello whose debut collection featured a dress that exposes one breast.

Saint Laurent has declined to comment. Ironically, the label made its name by putting women in men's tuxedos, a gesture that chimed with the rising feminist wave of the 1970s.

The poster campaign “ticks all the sexist boxes. The women are objectified, hypersexualised and put in submissive positions,” Raphaelle Remy-Leleu from French women's group, Osez le feminisme (“Dare to be Feminist”), told AFP.

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French Vogue celebrates 100 years

French Vogue celebrates 100 years. Photo: Thomas Olva/AFP

But as well as celebrating the magazine’s storied history, the exhibit comes at a time of turbulence for the publication.

Just last month, it was confirmed that its editor of 10 years, Emmanuelle Alt, was out and wouldn’t be replaced.

She was not alone.

Looking to cut costs, owner Conde Nast International has axed editors across Europe over the past year, and put international Vogue editions under the direct control of global editorial director, Anna Wintour, in New York.

New York-based Anna Wintour now has overall control of French Vogue. Photo by Christophe ARCHAMBAULT / AFP

Like much of the media industry, Vogue is struggling with tumbling sales and ad revenue in the digital era.

But the latest twist is also part of the endless push and pull between New York and Paris going back to its early days.

“The whole history of French Vogue is one of back-and-forth with Conde Nast in New York – growing more independent for a while, then being reined back in,” said Sylvie Lecallier, curator of the new exhibition, “Vogue Paris 1920-2020″, which opened this weekend after a year’s delay due to the pandemic.

The Paris edition was often the loftier, more bohemian sibling to its more hard-nosed New York version.

But it was also the hotbed in which much of 20th century style and womenhood came to be defined.

“Paris was the place to hunt out talent and content and bring it to New York,” said Lecallier.

The exhibition charts the evolution from art deco drawings of the 1920s through the erotic image-making of photographers like Helmut Newton in the 1960s and 1970s.

Its last peak was under editor Carine Roitfeld in the 2000s, who brought back a provocative Gallic identity by ridding the newsroom of foreign staff and becoming a fashion icon in her own right.

Her successor, Alt, was a quieter presence, though she still oversaw key moments including its first transgender cover star, Brazilian Valentina Sampaio, in 2017.

But internet culture has created “a perfect storm” for Vogue, says media expert Douglas McCabe of Enders Analysis.

“The first 80 years of Vogue’s life, it had the market to itself, it was the bible for fashion,” McCabe told AFP.

“But online today, there are so many other ways to get your information. Influencers, Instagram, YouTube — everyone’s a threat.”

In a world where new fashion trends can blow up around the world in seconds, it has become much harder for a monthly magazine to set the pace.

“It’s not that they can’t survive for another 100 years — but they will be differently sized,” McCabe said.

Vogue has tried to branch out into different areas, including events.

“I used to work for a magazine, and today I work for a brand,” Alt said on the eve of French Vogue’s 1,000th issue in 2019.

But the big money was always in print, and Vogue Paris sales are dropping steadily from 98,345 in 2017 to 81,962 to 2020, according to data site ACPM.

It is perhaps unsurprising that the new top job in Paris, redefined as “head of editorial content”, went to Eugenie Trochu, who was key to building the magazine’s online presence.

She declared herself “thrilled to be part of Vogue’s international transformation”.

For the curator of the exhibition, it is ironic timing.

“We had no idea it would end like this when we started work on the exhibition,” said Lecallier.

“Who knows where it will go from here.”

The exhibition Vogue Paris 1920-2020 is at the Palais Galliera in Paris’ 16th arrondissement. The gallery is open 10am to 6pm Tuesday to Sunday and is closed on Mondays. Tickets for the exhibition are €14 (€12 for concessions and under 18s go free) and must be reserved online in advance.

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