Well that’s one way to make a statement. Eckhaus Latta’s new campaign for their Spring 2017 collection takes pushing the boundaries to a whole new level.
Proving that sex sells, the brand unveiled its racy new ads, photographed by Heji Shin, featuring real-life couples engaging in a variety of sex acts. Casting both gay and straight couples straight out of Craigslist, the real life couples wear Eckhaus Latta’s spring collection while having sex.
Their inspiration came from friend and Korean-German photographer Heji Shin, who a few years ago took a break from shooting editorials for magazines like 032c to photograph a sex education textbook for teenagers. The pair decided that they were “amused by the relationship between fashion advertising and sexuality (and) more interested in producing images that are open to interpretation.”
The team assembled a cast of mostly thirty-somethings, all of whom Shin shot by herself in their bedrooms. “They had to be comfortable and intimate—they’re not professionals,” she said. “But they were all excited about it, and wanted to do it and to do it in the context of the Eckhaus Latta ad campaigns.
In the end, it all came together: After Eckhaus Latta uploaded the campaign—pixelated, on Monday, their site quickly crashed. “The idea that we made people hungry for an image is fascinating to us,” Latta said. When the site went back online, the response was largely “super-positive,” which pleasantly surprised the designers. It seemed to confirm their intent which was to normalize, not sensationalize.
