Calvin Klein — the American fashion house best known for its underwear and denim lines — has garnered notoriety for its sexy ad campaigns. Television networks have prohibited the brand's suggestive commercials from being broadcasted nationwide. Conservative groups have launched boycotts against the company. And advertising regulators have issued bans on ads considered to be incredibly vulgar.
Most recently, a 2023 Calvin Klein ad featuring FKA Twigs was banned in the U.K. following complaints that an image of the singer-songwriter and dancer went way too far. The outcry has called attention to the apparent double standards — FKA Twigs’ ban comes amid ongoing praise for Jeremy Allen White’s Calvin Klein underwear campaign. In fact, Allen White’s ad has caused such a frenzy that it was brought up during a backstage interview at this year’s Golden Globes ceremony.
Calvin Klein is no stranger to controversy or scorn. Let's look back at the brand’s most controversial ads:
01 1980: Brooke Shields
The infamous Calvin Klein Jeans ad campaign features a then 15-year-old Brooke Shields wearing a pair of slim-fit jeans and a brown button-down shirt exposing her midriff. Alongside her photo is the tagline, “You want to know what comes between me and my Calvins? Nothing" — insinuating that the underage Shields was not wearing underwear. Commercials of the campaign were banned from being shown on CBS and ABC in the U.S.
Shields revealed in the 2023 ABC News documentary "Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields" that at the time, she didn’t understand the innuendo implied in the tagline: "There was nothing in me that ever had the idea that it was sexual," she said.
She expressed similar sentiments while speaking to Dax Shepard in an episode of his podcast “Armchair Expert," saying, "I didn't think it had to do with underwear, I didn't think it was sexual in nature. I would say it about my sister, 'Nobody can come between me and my sister.'"
02 1992: Kate Moss and Mark Wahlberg
Moss was only 17 when she was asked to pose topless alongside the then 21-year-old Wahlberg. Although the campaign kicked off Moss’ modeling career — and made her a household name within the industry — Moss said years later that she has “not very good memories” about the shoot.
In a 2022 episode of BBC Radio 4’s “Desert Island Discs,” Moss said she felt “vulnerable,” “scared,” and “objectified” when she was asked to pose salaciously alongside Wahlberg.
“I was quite young and innocent; Calvin loved that,” she said, adding, “I really didn’t feel well at all before the shoot. For like a week or two, I couldn’t get out of bed, and I had severe anxiety, and the doctor gave me Valium.”
Wahlberg also addressed the campaign during a 2020 interview with The Guardian. “I never really had a problem with Kate, did I?,” Wahlberg said when asked if he ever made up with Moss.
“I think I was probably a little rough around the edges. Kind of doing my thing. I wasn’t very . . . worldly, let’s say that,” he continued. “But I’ve seen her and said hello. I think we saw each other at a concert here and there, we said hi and exchanged pleasantries.”
03 1993: Kate Moss
The following year, Moss posed nude in commercials for the brand’s “Obsession,” the fragrance “that traffics in the singular feeling of infatuation,” as Elle Magazine described it. To help capture the sensual themes in the ads, Klein refrained from shooting in a studio and instead, sent an 18-year-old Moss and her then boyfriend, 20-year-old photographer Mario Sorrenti, to the British Virgin Islands for 10 days to photograph the campaign.
Many critics bashed the campaign for its glorification of the “Heroin Chic” aesthetic, which glamorizes traits associated with drug abuse, like pale skin, dark eye circles, thin figures and emaciated features.
04 1995: Child welfare concerns and Bill Clinton’s outrage
Regarded as the most controversial campaign in Calvin Klein’s history, the 1995 commercials (shot by Steven Meisel) features several young, scantily clad models – perceived as possibly underage teenagers – posing in a small, wood-paneled room. The commercials’ lewd innuendos along with the male interviewer’s suggestive tone drew many comparisons to porn audition videos.
The campaign also garnered widespread backlash from child welfare authorities, leaders of the Catholic league and the conservative American Family Association, who collectively threatened a nationwide boycott of the brand. Bill Clinton publicly condemned the Calvin Klein campaign, calling the ads “outrageous” and manipulative to children.
“I may be stepping on somebody's toes tonight. I don't have any comment on whether those Calvin Klein ads were legal or illegal,” he said. “But those children were my daughter's age in those ads, and they were outrageous. It was wrong. It was wrong to manipulate those children and use them for commercial benefit. It's hard enough to grow up as it is without confusing people further.”
The Justice Department launched an investigation into the ads, but later closed it after Calvin Klein proved that all the models were adults. Although the brand asserted that the ads were “misunderstood by some,” it eventually agreed to cease the campaign.
05 1999: Children’s underwear campaign yanked
Calvin Klein also pulled its 1999 campaign for children's underwear after Donald Wildmon, the then-president of the American Family Association, said the ads were “nothing more than pornography.”
“Whether you like it or not you have pedophiles in this society. Anything that could get them excited is detrimental, irresponsible and reckless,” he said.
A black and white photograph of the promotion shows two boys wearing briefs. The photograph was published in full-page newspaper ads before Calvin Klein announced that it would pull all print ads and billboards associated with the campaign.
The company stood by its campaign, saying it was “intended to show children smiling, laughing and just being themselves.”
06 2008: Eva Mendes
National television networks refused to broadcast Calvin Klein and Coty’s commercial for their new fragrance Secret Obsession because it starred a naked Eva Mendes. In the unedited commercial, Mendes is seen rolling around naked in the sheets and, in one moment, exposing her nipples.
The ad’s creative director Fabien Baron blamed much of the outcry on George W. Bush, who was president at the time. “You must be kidding me. This country really needs a new President — this country is so messed up,” Baron told WWD.” He added that if kids could watch people get killed, then they could certainly handle seeing Mendes nude.
07 2009: The orgy and foursome ads
In January, Calvin Klein launched a racy ad featuring six models, many of them wearing nothing but a pair of jeans, fondling each other on a sofa and moving in ways that could be construed as having sex. Although the ads were banned from television, they were available to watch on YouTube, where they quickly amassed views and much attention.
The brand also came under fire in June for a provocative billboard that was spotted in New York City's Soho neighborhood. The towering 50-foot ad depicted a four-way sex scene, which Calvin Klein defended as “a very sexy campaign that speaks to our targeted demographic.”
“Not only the billboard, but a company — a corporate giant in America — feels it appropriate to put a semi-nude photograph in a major billboard in a high-traffic area where tens of thousands of children see this kind of activity going on,” Randy Sharp, director of special projects for the American Family Association, told ABC News at the time.
08 2010: Lara Stone
The Calvin Klein Jeans campaign that features Lara Stone surrounded by several men was taken down by the Advertising Standards Bureau in Australia after many suggested that the ad connotes gang rape.
“The Board considered that whilst the act depicted could be consensual, the overall impact and most likely takeout is that the scene is suggestive of violence and rape,” the bureau said.
“The Board considered that the image was demeaning to women by suggesting that she is a plaything of these men. It also demeans men by implying sexualized violence against women.”
09 2023: FKA Twigs
A 2023 Calvin Klein ad with FKA Twigs was banned in the U.K. after people complained that an image of FKA Twigs draped in a denim button-down was offensive and inappropriate.
“The ad used nudity and centered on FKA Twigs’s physical features rather than the clothing, to the extent that it presented her as a stereotypical sexual object,” a statement from the the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) read. Similar complaints were also made about Kendall Jenner’s 2023 Calvin Klein campaign, in which she appears topless, but a ban was never issued.
FKA Twigs defended her campaign, writing on Instagram, “I do not see the ‘stereotypical sexual object’ that they have labeled me. I see a beautiful strong woman of color whose incredible body has overcome more pain than you can imagine.”
“[I]n light of reviewing other campaigns past and current of this nature, [I] can’t help but feel there are some double standards here,” she continued. FKA Twigs’ Calvin Klein ad ban was announced amid ongoing praise for Jeremy Allen White’s steamy Calvin Klein ad.
