Calvin Klein is not shy about pushing the envelope when it comes to advertising. In 1980, he featured a 15-year-old Brooke Shields purring "Nothing comes between me and my Calvins." He has mounted giant billboards in Times Square featuring chiselled male models wearing only stark white briefs. He has used the child-like Kate Moss to embody the essence of his Obsession perfume and most recently, has been at the forefront of fashion's grunge trend, using stringy-haired, unwashed youth to hawk his cKbe and cKone fragrances. Klein has always been at the forefront of the youth trend in advertising, but in a 1995 campaign for Calvin Klein Jeans, his images of pubescent models in provocative poses caused major controversy and debate when they crossed the line between fashion and pornography.

The advertising campaign -- which used images of models who were reportedly as young as 15 -- was meant to mimic "picture set" pornography of the '60s. In the magazine ads, young models posed suggestively in a sleazy suburban "Rec Room," complete with cheap panelled walls, a paint splattered ladder, and purple shag carpeting. The TV spots left little doubt that the images intended to imitate pornography. In one of these ads, the camera focused on the face of a young man, as an off camera male voice cajoled him into ripping off his shirt, saying " You got a real nice look. How old are you? Are you strong? You think you could rip that shirt off of you? That's a real nice body. You work out? I can tell." In another, a young girl is told that she's pretty and not to be nervous, as she begins to unbutton her clothes.

Klein insisted that the campaign was not pornographic -- that the ads were intended to "convey the idea that glamour is an inner quality that can be found in regular people in the most ordinary setting; it is not something exclusive to movie stars and models." Consumer and child welfare advocates disagreed, finding the ads disturbing and exploitative. The American Family Association began a massive letter campaign to retailers, threatening to boycott their stores if they carried Klein's jeans and Seventeen and other major magazines refused to carry the campaign. Eventually the U.S. Justice Department launched an investigation into whether or not Klein had violated child pornography laws. (In the United States, five criteria are used in determining pornographic images: focusing on the genital area, showing unnatural poses, depicting children as sex objects, implying that the children are willing to engage in sex, and suggestive settings). Under increasing pressure and scrutiny, Klein recalled the ads, but not before the ensuing controversy and publicity had turned his jeans into the "must-have" item of the season. As one marketing director noted, this controversy took Klein's "coolness factor from a 10 to a 60," and if continued sales are any indication, his "bad boy" reputation has only enhanced his products in the eyes of young consumers.

Klein is not alone in his use of controversial images in advertising. After all, the whole point of advertising has always been to attract attention, and fashion advertising is notorious for its exploitative use of young men and women. But one senses that there is a new conservatism among consumers, who are fed up with X-rated images hawking everything from beer to video games. In continuing to push the envelope, designers like Klein may find that they have pushed the patience of their consumers too far.

A possible backlash to this campaign occurred in 1999, when Klein launched an ad campaign for his children's underwear line. The campaign involved three different photos, two depicting two little boys playing on a sofa and clad only in CK underpants and the third depicting two little girls playing on a sofa and clad only in CK undergarments. These images appeared as full page ads in the New York Post and prominent magazines, and as a huge billboard in Manhattan's Times Square.


Due to public furore, these ads were pulled 24 hours later. A Calvin Klein spokesperson claimed that these ads were intended "to capture the same warmth and spontaneity that you find in a family snapshot." The general public disagreed, with numerous experts citing that these ads were pornographic because they featured high definition, sexualized images of young children. In many cases, those who were against the ads cited Klein's previous track record as sufficient proof that these images were exploitative.