It isn't enough just to sell clothes by putting your best designs on beautiful bodies. If that's all you did, your designs would get lost in the crowd. You have to find a presentation that pops. You have to seek out ways to make your ad stand out from the other billboards and magazine pages.
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Sometimes the need to separate oneself from the rest of the rack leads to exciting and innovative ad campaigns. More often than not, it leads to the same hackneyed themes being rehashed over and over again. Eventually, the ads start to blend together and ridiculous looking print ads start to become commonplace.
For some reason, certain themes appear again and again in fashion print ads. How many times have we seen a fair haired model running through a field of wheat if that brand can be associated in any way with "Americana." How often has a swimming pool been used to evoke elegance? Or exotic animals to convey a sense of worldly travel? Today, we look at the most ridiculous and overused fashion ad concepts and demand that style industry ad men try a little harder next time. Here are 10 Fashion Advertising Clichés That Make Zero Sense Whatsoever.
Wheat Fields
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When she presented her Spring/Summer 2011 collection, designer Anna Sui channeled Little House on the Prairie and had her models walk the runway with a wheat field in the background. If you've ever walked anywhere near a wheat field before, you know that you probably aren't likely to see this model-filled Chloé ad:
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but this guy:
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What has caused so many fashion ads to take to the wheat field? Perhaps it is the "amber waves of grain," synonymous with the American Dream. Perhaps it is the way that the wheat plays off of a fair-haired model's wind swept look. Perhaps it is because it costs far less to walk to a wheat field than to set up the studio for the day. Whatever the reason, it is time that we retire the wheat field from our print ads and let the poor farmers get back to work.I promise you, teen girls will still by your flannel shirts and pre-ripped denim bootie shorts even if the models are no longer frolicking in wheat.
Clothing In Swimming Pools
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Apparently, customers love seeing clothes as they would never wear them. The most glaring example of this is when models sports fashions that would never be worn anywhere near swimming pools while they take laps, lounge about, or express under water ennui.
Admittedly, sometimes it does look quite elegant, like Suitsupply's latest campaign selling impeccably tailored garms.
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But are you really going to wear your fancy-ass jewelry into the water? Looking at you, Daria Werbowy for Céline.
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If so, you're probably balling on a whole other level (after all—you're in freaking Céline), and we doff our waterlogged caps to you.
Laundromat Shoots
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Even the most style conscious among us have trouble stunting on laundry day. You're lucky if you manage to put on clean underwear, let alone put together a runway worthy get-up. If someone showed up at the laundromat looking like Rosie-Huntington Whitely in the above editorial from Vogue Mexico, you might begin to suspect something.
Yet, the readymade retro geometry of laundromats has made "laundry day" a popular a theme for fashion photography, but even when fashion ads put models in outfits that look kind of right, they still feel kind of wrong. But, then again, who wants to see an ad with a model dressed like this?
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Clothes You Can't Work Out In At the Gym
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While plenty of fashion people love to hit the gym, namely guys like goth beefcake Rick Owens, there are plenty of times the gym acts as a setting for haute couture. Even a mild gym rat knows that if you show up at the gym in head-to-toe Chanel tweed, you will be in violation of the gym's terms and conditions.
The collegiate meat heads at the front desk are known to cast a blind eye to minor attire infractions, particularly when a cute girl is the culprit, but we all know that high heels can easily get tangled up in jump ropes and rowing machines. And the last thing your local gym needs is a lawsuit on its hands thanks to fashionable footwear.
Ads for upscale gyms aren't without blame either. Consider this your "on notice" warning, Equinox... or rather, Chic-quinox. This makes sense because both clothing companies and fitness centers are selling you sex at prices that would bankrupt a working class family. But damn, her legs look good.
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Body Paint
Yes, body paint is sexy. But, using body paint in an ad is kind of self-defeating. The model isn't even wearing the clothes you're selling. If that isn't some post-modern late-stage capitalist shit, I don't know what is. And even if you aren't bothered by this increased distance from the product we're buying, you have to admit that it would be helpful to avoid body paint when it comes to items one purchases based on how they support your body.
In the case of Heidi Klum's Astor Cosmetics campaign, it kind of makes sense—because it's a make-up ad. But New York magazine Fall Fashion Issue cover of Lake Bell doesn't even bother with clothes. The only way you're wearing this "outfit" is if you are cast in a avant-garde production of A Midsummer Night's Dream.
Of course, there is a time and a place for body paint, like these Ipanema sandals advertisements featuring a flip-flop hawing Gisele Bundchen.
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