Dolce & Gabbana: censored ad

Dolce and Gabbana are a wellknown brand today. They arrived at the international high end fashion scene not very long ago and in relatively short period of time, were able to build up their image.

Obviously, the world is full of designers. Many of them have good imagination and skills but only a selected few become so famous that they can sell their creations for outrageous amounts.

D&G made their brand name on the basis of shocking and very imaginative ads that caught the fancy of the youth of that time. Using ambigous looking models, where it was difficult to make out if it was a man or a woman, with effeminate looking young boys and muscular girls, they immediately got noticed.

Over the past few years, their ads have continued to become more and more explicit with completely nudity and suggestive poses. For example look the following two examples of their ads:

In both these ads, there is a completely nude male figure, however the subject of the picture is not overtly sexual and thus the picture can evoke ambigous feelings in the onlooker.
However, lately they have gone into more explicitly sexual ads, like the one below that has clear gay tones as a nude man lies in the middle, another man is undressing and other dressed men look down suggestively.

Their latest ad was even more shocking and provoked some protests and was banned first in Spain and then in Italy. The independent Italian advertising monitoring body explains its banning decision, "The picture of the nude man holding the wrists of the nude woman and preparing to penetrate her, while she is clearly struggling and trying to get away, with two onlookers who look passively without interfering, suggests violence and rape and thus can not be accepted."

Obviously the banned ad created even more publicity and thus D&G must be happy that their brand is going to be even more famous.