Mark Steines

Nearing the ten year anniversary of the controversial “child-porn” underwear advertisements, Calvin Klein has launched another raunchy ad campaign for the spring 2009 collection, featuring an orgy of young men and women.

For the latest ad campaign, Calvin Klein hired Steven Meisel, famous for the photography in Madonna’s pornographic “Sex” book in the early 90s. The ads, which can be seen in women’s fashion magazines such as Lucky and Cosmopolitan and soon to be on billboards, are composed of photographs of three to five twenty-somethings sprawled out half naked on each other in various sexual positions. Viewers can see the multimedia version of the ads in an online video considered too explicit to air in the United States.

Calvin Klein has propagated controversial ads in recent history, the most unforgettable being a 1999 advertisement that conjured up images of child pornography. Due to public outcry, the offending ads, which displayed young models showing their underwear and included creepily suggestive dialogue, were removed from the campaign within 24 hours.