1990s Calvin Klein Banned Ads

From the famously banned ad campaign for Calvin Klein in 1995 by renowned photographer Steven Meisel.

It may have been one of the brand’s most controversial.

Models were shot in a wood-paneled room, and people criticized them for looking like amateur porn. CK faced backlash from parents, from child welfare authorities, and the American Family Association. The justice department even opened an investigation on whether or not CK had violated child pornography laws, but the case was dropped when it was confirmed that the models were adults.

“...Still, the Jeans campaign in question was something different. It broke taboos. The setup was a seedy suburban rec room, with fake wood paneling and purple wall-to-wall. The spots featured CK-clad teenagers as pretty in one way or another as their surroundings were dingy. Answering an off-camera male’s leading questions, they looked like they could’ve been auditioning for a budget porn film. Indignation came fast and furious. It was loud enough to pique the interest of the FBI, which threatened a child pornography investigation. Noisy enough, indeed, to draw the attention of President Clinton, who publicly complained about the “half-dressed adolescents” in Klein’s ads.

At the time, Klein made a case for the ads’ stars: “We use a lot of real people. . . . So the world is seeing a reflection of what’s really going on. I think people get it, and I think they like it.” Klein wasn’t an outlier in this regard. Moss enjoyed huge success partly because she was a visual riposte to the (somewhat) more voluptuous supermodels who came before her. Magazines both independent and mainstream were rejecting the formalized glamour of previous decades’ photography in favor of something grittier. And it wasn’t just fashion that was tapping into the new mood. Grunge was dominating the airwaves and around the same time Hollywood gave us films like Kids and Trainspotting.” - Nicole Phelps ,Vogue Magazine