BOTTICELLI, Freud, Renoir and now Versace, the naked female form has been considered art for centuries.
Hung in the finest galleries around the world and used for big-name brands, there is no denying that sex sells.
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So what better way for designer Donatella Versace to advertise her latest designs than hire not one, but two supermodels in the buff. We told yesterday how the fashion house’s new Garden Of Eden campaign stars sisters Gigi and Bella Hadid with strategically-placed £1,530 handbags to cover their modesty.
And the advert works. With no bright or fussy clothes to distract me from the accessories, my eyes were drawn to the luxury handbags that is trying to flog — job done.
It follows huge campaigns including Jacquemus’ Fall/Winter 2021 collection, starring their pal Kendall Jenner nude save for shoes, socks and bag. And Kate Moss completely naked to promote St. Tropez self-tan in 2013.
But nude advertising has its critics. Some argue it objectifies women, and in 2000 the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) famously banned YSL’s “degrading” print ad for Opium perfume that showed Sophie Dahl lying naked, with her back arched and a nipple in view.
The ASA has since banned several more ads for showing models in varying states of undress, claiming they are offensive.
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But the female form is beautiful and powerful, and I believe it should be celebrated. Women didn’t burn their bras so modern-day “wokes” can squirm and force us to cover up.
Versace and the like are trying to grab women’s attention, not men’s after all. Have you ever heard of a man dropping £3,000 on a handbag because he saw a nude model carrying one?
Both high-end and high street brands have used — and will continue to use — women’s bodies to flog their goods because it is proven that sex attracts attention.
According to a study by the University of Georgia, we are more likely to make impulse purchases when nudity is used in an advert.
And research by the University of California found seeing an attractive woman — or man — in an advert excited areas of the brain that make us buy on impulse, and bypass the areas which control rational thought.
It doesn’t bother me in the slightest that a watch is being modelled by naked women — I’m only looking at the watch.
But if that model has shiny hair, plump skin and flawless make-up, it might just make me lust after the timepiece even more.
Adverts are supposed to be aspirational.
Burberry was criticised in 2013 for its Body perfume ad in which Rosie Huntington-Whiteley lay in nothing but a mac.
But I can tell you, if anything is going to make me want to buy a scent or something as bland as a beige trench coat it is the idea that maybe, just maybe, I will look and smell like Rosie.
Burberry’s sexy campaign helped to reverse its reputation as a “chav” brand, loved by football hooligans and D-list soap actors across the country, and it is now back to being one of Britain’s most stylish and sought-after design houses.
To those who moan that it is only ever women who are asked to strip off to promote goods, it is just not the case.
Who can forget the adonis David Gandy, lying on a boat in his small tighty whities for Dolce & Gabbana’s Light Blue aftershave?
You can bet any lad that watched the advert wanted to splash out on the scent, hoping it would make them smell as irresistible as David.
And following the release of the 1985 Levi’s advert, starring the late Nick Kamen taking off his denims in a laundrette, sales of the jeans soared 800 per cent.
If brands want to make some cash they would be foolish not to take stock of the science behind nude advertising.
And if you do not like the Hadid sisters using their perfectly formed bodies to sell luxury handbags, you can look away.
But if you do have a spare thousand lying around, I wouldn’t say no to one of those bags.
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