Sex Sells: An Analysis of Recent Tom Ford Ad Campaigns

The other day I bought a magazine, for fear of helplessly gawping at random strangers on the tube. It’s not something I do on purpose, gawping that is, but constantly find myself doing it unless otherwise occupied. It’s not quite gawping in the threatening  or seedy sense of the word, but somehow when, the person you were unintentionally glaring intensely at in the reflection of the window catches you right between the eyes, you begin to excessively blink and shuffle in an awkward kind of way, in a pathetic attempt to make it look like you weren’t gawping, in turn looking like you are very guilty indeed of having a good gawp. So this time, as I placed myself neatly on a vacant seat, I felt all cock-sure, with the magazine on my lap, that gawping was definitely not happening today. I flicked nonchalantly through the pages becoming increasingly frustrated by the fact that I had reached page 34 and still had not read a single line of text. “This is a fucking joke” I muttered to myself, exasperated now by the amount of ad campaigns I had just sloshed my way through, until I reached an ad by none other than the sacrosanct Tom Ford. I couldn’t help it, I gawped.

I bet you had good gawp too.

The prolific designer, renowned for his explicit advertising techniques and enthusiastic promotion of the “sex sells” manifesto, has done it again, except this time it’s sexy, in a weird way. To say the least, it’s a bit fucked up. Julia Kristeva’s own nipples would be tingling with excitement at how dominant the abject features in this image. It is as though Tom Ford has complicated the simple sex strategy to the more convoluted, abjectification of sex rather than the objectification of it in earlier images.  Kristeva notes that the, “[Abject] lies there quite close, but it cannot be assimilated. It beseeches, worries, and fascinates desire, which, nevertheless, does not let itself be seduced. Apprehensive, desire turns aside; sickened, it rejects.” Although simultaneously accepting the controversial, artistic nature of the image and rejecting the blood, nipple, beak scenario, we remain intrigued. However Ford’s previous erotic campaigns have transcended from trashy chic (if there is such a term) to arty “psychoanalytical” farty. The following image is a ”closer” (I say this with caution)look at two of Ford’s previous campaigns for his eponymous men’s fragrance....

.....Cripes!!! Something about these images in particular brings me to Martin Amis in his 1984 novel, Money, when he writes, “Shame is a chick who blew you in the can that time. Ooh, she is so shameless. Watch her make a lunge for your nuts! Every so often fear fucks shame for something to do. He’s not frightened. She couldn’t care.”  I snigger upon reading the controversial lines because I know not much has changed since then. It is a good metaphorical summary of capitalist culture and for all its grim, demoralising nastiness, it is an honest observation. It looks like Tom Ford made it literal.

So we’re the cock called Fear, Ford; the hot chick called Shame. Shame’s a clever bitch that sucks us off in the changing room, spraying herself across the clefts of our collarbones and smalls of our wrists. So we fuck her and pay the money, we’re not afraid, so what. She doesn’t care as long as she sells. And so it is, we’re bumming Ford, when really Ford’s bumming us, we’re all delightfully bumming each other in the erotic euphoria of fragrance and sex and style and beauty, until Shame starts breast feeding a crow.