Ads - Part 3

 Fragrance for Men

One product category whose ads have repeatedly featured nude men is fragrance (perfume or cologne) for men.

This 1971 photo for the Yves Saint Laurent fragrance "Pour Homme" featured Yves Saint Laurent himself.  Though the photo has become famous, it was not a great idea for an ad.  Sorry, Yves, but you may not have been everyone's idea of a sex symbol.

Apparently Yves learned his lesson.  His 1999 ad for "Rive Gauche" featured good-looking nude male models with a clothed female, a witty reversal of the Manet painting Le Dejeuner sur L'Herbe in which the men are clothed and the woman is nude.

This 2002 ad for the fragrance M7 goes even further.  It features a full-frontal view of hunky martial arts champion-turned-model Samuel de Cubber.  The ad ran in French fashion magazines as well as magazines directed at the gay community.  I guess Saint Laurent, who was gay, had figured out his audience.

Clavin Klein, on the other hand, followed the theory that it's not gay to show a naked man as long as there's a woman in the ad, too, like this 1990 ad for Obsession.

This 1994 ad for "4711" cologne by a little-known company, Richard Barrie Fragrances, offered a poster of the ad for $6 in the fine print.  Maybe they thought if they couldn't sell the cologne, they could make some money from selling posters of a naked guy.

We end with this 2002 commercial for "Pour Homme" by Lacoste, featuring Australian model Ian Lawless walking nude through a stylish apartment and ending with him smiling when someone opens the door to join him.  Now that's what naked advertising is all about!