Jeans that look even better on the floor
By JASON FEIFER, Associated Press, June 10, 2006

For a clothing company, Shai's models don't stay dressed very long.
Instead, the French company's online summer catalog displays the clothing in action, and inaction. In three videos, shirts are quickly peeled off, pants are yanked down, and the models do what naked people do best.

No question about it, this is porn -- slick, graphic and heavy on close-ups. But don't fret, shoppers: The videos easily pause to display product information.

Clothing companies such as Abercrombie & Fitch and American Apparel have taken heat for sexy advertising, but they look downright G-Rated next to the Paris-based Shai. In an attempt to boost its name, the four-year-old urban apparel business took a trend to the extreme, making explicit what is often so implicit in fashion advertising.

Its catalog has become a predictable Internet success, with about 1.5 million visitors since it was launched on March 20. Its message boards are filled with viewers' praise and scorn.

But according to the advertising agency behind it, the catalogs and the company were never really about sex.

''What we're trying to do is to communicate to people that porn is not a taboo anymore, and porn is entertaining,'' said Damon Crepin-Burr, creative director for the Paris-based advertising agency agence7seven. ''So, we entertain them. And we say, when you look at porn, there's clothes everywhere.''

Clothing catalogs traditionally relied on consumer desires, said Crepin-Burr: A person saw an attractive model wearing a certain outfit, and would buy it in hopes of looking like the model.

But today's consumers don't think like that, he said. They want to be engaged, not lured.

That's a common attitude among marketers, particularly in an increasingly cluttered media landscape, according to Abbey Klaassen, media reporter for the industry publication Advertising Age. Some of the most successful ads now are greatly entertaining but have little or nothing to do with the product they promote, she said.

''We are in this age where we're bombarded with lots of commercial messages,'' she said, ''so you see a lot of advertisers to try to break out and stand out with something that is so unusual or controversial that people will seek it out.''

On the Internet, marketers have become more willing to take those risks, she said. Their reward can be great: a viral campaign that consumers pass along to each other, resulting in cheap, self-perpetuating exposure.

Burger King accomplished that in 2004 with subservientchicken.com, a Web site featuring an interactive actor in a chicken outfit. More recently, clothing designer Mark Ecko did it with a video that appeared to show him graffiti-tagging Air Force One.

In using sex so explicitly, Shai is hoping for the same thing: more bang for their buck, so to speak.

But Shai's catalog isn't indicative of the fashion world, which is still far from using sex so overtly, according to Loretta Volpe, professor of marketing communications at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York. That's especially true in America, because the country is less tolerant of risque content that's common in Europe, she said.

Even at American Apparel, a Los Angeles-based clothing company known for raw, sexual ads, Shai's approach is too much. Senior content advisor Alexandra Spunt said her company's ads try to convey a sense of intimacy, and that's not possible with slick pornography.

Not to mention, she said, there's value in keeping the models clothed -- and not just because the company is trying to sell product.

''I think anyone will admit that there's something exciting to leaving part of it up to your imagination, just in everyday life and attraction,'' she said. ''So there's something very different between seeing someone completely revealed and seeing someone clothed or partially clothed. In a way, that can be sexier.''

American advertising may not always be so different from Europe's, though. Volpe said that as the Internet gives advertising a worldwide reach, European attitudes will become more influential.

But by then, Shai will likely be out of the sex business. The summer catalog was only the opening salvo in what Crepin-Burr said will be a long, diverse campaign to win customers through provocative entertainment.

Crepin-Burr wouldn't hint at what's ahead. But next time, he said, the clothes are staying on.