Marc Jacobs Oh Lola! Campaign banned by Ads Watchdog!

A small pitfall in the otherwise soaring career of arch-deacon of playful cool Marc Jacobs; his latest fragrance campaign, and it's muse, have been censored in the UK for treading on the wrong side of youthful sexiness.

The ad features the 17 year-old Dakota Fanning resplendent in a short dress from Jacob's latest collection, 'cradling' (for lack of a more descriptive word) the perfume bottle in between her young legs.

The original banned advert. 

Whilst this is hardly the first time Monsieur Jacobs has sought to provoke with his advertising campaigns (who could forget his memorable BANG campaign featuring the designer with only a perfum bottle between himself and his modesty?) the advert was deemed inappropriate due to the relatively youthful looks of Miss Fanning.

I find it hard to believe that either she or the campaigns' original creators had paaedophilia in mind when starting to shoot the campaign; however the watchdog clarifies it's issue with the release in this official statement:
“length of her dress, her leg and the position of the perfume bottle drew attention to her sexuality. Because of that, along with her appearance, we considered the ad could be seen to sexualise a child.”

With a brand image like his it's hard to see what distinguishes this campaign as particularly inappropriate, especially given that the model herself is 17 and thus more adult than child. Still, the watchdog has barked and for now Team Jacobs will have to scratch their heads in finding a new image to promote their latest fragrance. Who knows, this incident could even boost their sales in the long run? As a wise one once said "there's no such thing as bad publicity..."