Yves Saint Laurent's infamous Opium advert featuring a naked Sophie Dahl is the eighth most complained about advert in the last 50 years.
The infamous Yves Saint Laurent Opium perfume advert featuring a naked Sophie Dahl has been named as the eighth most-complained about in the last 50 years in a new survey released by the Advertising Standards Agency.
The campaign first made headlines in 2000 when the French fashion house plastered the image of red-headed Dahl, unclothed but for some sparkly jewels and a pair of heels and posing suggestively, on billboards around the country. Shot by Steven Meisel, Tom Ford - who was then the newly-appointed creative director of YSL - hoped the advert would put the then-ailing brand back on the fashion map whilst also giving a nod to house's history of sexual provocation and female liberation.
Ford's technique worked and the image has since become synonymous with the house, and Opium - which was first launched in 1977 - remains one of YSL's best-known scents.
The ASA received 948 complaints that the image was too sexually suggestive and unsuitable to be seen by children. As a result it was removed from billboards, but was still allowed to be used in appropriate magazines. - Telepgraph UK
