Christmas 1995 was a season of homoerotic advertising, if there ever was one. Advertising agencies seem to be in a race to use images previously seen mainly in gay porn.
"Calvin Klein is famous for memorable advertising, and I think we will continue to develop memorable advertising," said Martin J Rose, head of Calvin Klein Advertising. Klein was certainly memorable in San Francisco, where the very hot model Joel West turned up on every single kiosk in the city in December - over 150 lighted placements, 30 feet high each, costing Klein $55,000 a week total.
Calvin Klein was looking for new high-profile placements after it withdrew its series of "teenager" ads in August. The FBI had threatenedestigate the ads as child pornography - the first such investigation in US history - on the grounds that they were "lascivious."
However, the Justice Department now seems to give mere lasciviousness its blessing. A November 15 statement said Klein's ads were not pornographic since "they did not meet federal requirements of exposed genital and pubic areas."
Meanwhile, the Sam Shahid agency placed a series of very homoerotic ads for Abercrombie & Fitch, in Vanity Fair and Out - A&F's first series in a gay magazine. According to Peter Wert and Shahid, A&F had decided to "go out on a limb."
The ads, though, seem to work. And according to Marian Salzman, consumer insights director at NYC's Chiat/Day Agency, the Klein series was "pretty effective" among young buyers.
"I Don't think Teenagers were as horrified by it as the adults in their lives want them to be," she said.
