Advertisement Analysis

!1 Melissa Vorndran Eric Wilson Integrative Studio 2: Fashion 29 March 2017 As American as Andy Warhol Calvin Klein, the brand perhaps most famous for their advertisements that personify the phrase “sex sells,” has taken a departure from this tactic in their most recent campaign. Their Spring 2017 campaign “American Classics,” the first under the new Chief Creative Officer Raf Simons, shifts its focus from the sexually charged advertisements of the “#mycalvins” campaign to one which focuses on art, and American art in particular. Rather than simply selling the clothes depicted, this ad sells the Calvin Klein brand itself as an “American Classic” while engaging in a dialogue with the painting.

This advertisement, shot by Willy Vanderperre in the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, depicts an androgynous couple staring at a painting by Andy Warhol entitled Elvis 11 Times. The male figure wears nothing but his white briefs and has his arm draped over the shoulders of a female figure who wears straight-legged dark wash jeans and a white cotton tank top. Although there is nudity, it is decidedly not erotic. The draping of the arm over the woman’s shoulder can be interpreted as a friendly rather than overtly romantic gesture.

There is no passionate lover’s embrace; there is a calm scene of a couple in a museum casually taking in a painting by a great American artist. The colors are subdued, with a simple palette of grey, white, and denim blue. These calm, cool tones lead to the overall advertisement feeling

!2 unassuming, as if these figures completely belong in the museum, admiring the art in their jeans and underwear. This creates an approachable, easily aspirational quality.

This unassuming feeling is furthered by the clothes themselves. They are surprisingly simple, which is uncommon in fashion advertisements. There are only three articles of clothing on display in the advertisement: plain white briefs, a white cotton tank top, and straight legged jeans. Other than the (newly redesigned) Calvin Klein logo in the bottom right-hand corner, there is no indication that these clothes are by Calvin Klein. The simplicity of the clothes themselves are slightly complicated by the various cultural connotations of each item in the ad. These connotations are both within Calvin Klein’s brand as well as within broader culture.

The white boxer briefs have been a mainstay in Calvin Klein branding since its inception, with famous advertisements featuring athletes and male models clothed in nothing but the briefs, in the fashion that Susan Bordo describes in “Beauty (Re)discovers the Male Body.” Bordo categorized male fashion advertisements into two categories using primarily Calvin Klein ads as examples: the “rocks” and the “leaners,” each with their own ideas about what masculinity meant in the commercial context. According to Bordo, the “rocks” represented a more traditional idea of aggressive masculinity, while the “leaners” represented a more receptive version. 1 In this ad, the male model is neither a rock nor a leaner; he does not face the viewer of the ad and challenge them to a staring contest, but he also does not openly invite the viewer’s attention. Instead, he is focusing on the painting without explicitly emphasizing his own masculinity. By subverting what has long been canon in Calvin Klein advertisement, the cultural power of the white boxer briefs

Susan Bordo, “Beauty (Re)discovers the Male Body,” in The Male Body. (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1999), 840.

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!3 is revealed. By including the briefs in this alternative way, Calvin Klein seeks to make the statement that their underwear is so classic and ubiquitous that it no longer requires oversexed ads or garish logos to be recognizable as Calvin Klein. Rather, the white boxer brief itself morphs into a symbol for Calvin Klein as a brand, something which has been evolving over the years to reflect the current state of affairs. In this way, the evolution of the meanings attached to the boxer briefs has shifted in a similar way as that of jeans has.

Another iconic Calvin Klein item given a similar treatment in the ad is the pair of jeans on the female model. Jeans have a storied history within Calvin Klein, which is perhaps best illustrated by the infamous Brooke Shields denim campaign of the 1980s. Through this campaign and others like it, Calvin Klein successfully established its denim as a sex symbol. However, it is not treated as such in this ad. The cut of the jeans is not skintight, rather, they appear more utilitarian and even useful. Throughout history, jeans have also grown to represent “democracy, independence, equality, freedom, and fraternity,” 2 which are fundamentally and distinctly American ideas, according to Fred Davis’s article “Blue Jeans.” Jeans themselves represent many different things, but have a profound link to both Calvin Klein as a brand and American culture as a whole. The simple pair of jeans in the ad invites the viewer to explore all of these various ideas as they would the meaning of a piece of art in a museum.

The location of a museum establishes Calvin Klein’s clothing on the same plane as more traditionally recognizable forms of art, such as those done by Andy Warhol. The particular inclusion of Warhol’s art further cements the connection between Calvin Klein and American Fred Davis, “Blue Jeans,” in Signs of Life in the USA: Readings on Popular Culture for Writers, 5th edition, ed. Sonia Maasik and Jack Solomon. (New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s Press, 2006), 102.

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!4 culture, as Warhol’s art has come to represent the identity of American pop art in the 1960s. His works of art are instantly recognizable as his, and as American. This is furthered by the incorporation of popular culture, in this case a film still of Elvis Presley, into his piece. Elvis 11 Times depicts the cultural icon confronting the viewer, pointing a gun in what Susan Bordo would describe as a “rock” pose. The repetition of Elvis gave the painting an “assembly-line effect,” 3 as Warhol himself described it. This assembly line can be understood as a slight subversion to popular celebrity culture, in which people themselves become a commodity. By including this particular work of art, Calvin Klein includes itself in the tensions between art, commerce, and celebrity in a unique way considering the brand’s history with celebrity marketing. Even though Warhol’s art critiqued popular American culture, it has become a mainstay and even a symbol for that culture itself. By portraying the models in front of an American artist whose work carries such cultural weight, Calvin Klein asserts themselves as a cultural entity on the same level.

By titling the campaign “American Classics,” Calvin Klein not only asserts that the pieces of clothing it is selling: briefs, jeans, and tank tops, are American Classics, but that Calvin Klein in and of itself is an American Classic. This assertion is strengthened by their inclusion and reference to iconic Calvin Klein advertising methods which have arguably become representative of American culture as a whole. Additionally, the inclusion of the Andy Warhol painting furthers this argument by putting Calvin Klein on the same cultural level of importance as Andy Warhol.

Blake Gopnick, “Rearranging Warhol’s Legacy,” New York Times, May 15, 2014, accessed March 26, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/18/arts/design/rearranging-warholslegacy.html?_r=0 3

!5 The message Calvin Klein hopes to send through this campaign is clear: they are as American as Andy Warhol.

!6 Bibliography Bordo, Susan. “Beauty (Re)discovers the Male Body.” In The Male Body, 840. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1999.

Davis, Fred. “Blue Jeans.” In Signs of Life in the USA: Readings on Popular Culture for Writers, 5th edition, edited by Sonia Maasik and Jack Solomon, 102. New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s Press, 2006.

Gopnick, Blake. “Rearranging Warhol’s Legacy.” New York Times, May 15, 2014. Accessed March 26, 2017. https://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/18/arts/design/rearranging-warhols-legacy.html?_r=0