Fashion advertising is usually done in-house by edgy art directors named Andr who are even more overpaid than me and who truly believe they're "artists" but who seriously don't know their ads from a hole in the ground, so they hire edgy photographers and pay them a shitload of money to shoot their singular vision, which is usually either models pretending that they're stoned or models pretending that they're dead—but definitely edgy models to help justify their label's 500 dollar price tag for cotton pants with holes in them.

Edgy fashion ads that actually make sense, like this excellent old French spot for Egoiste by Chanel, are about a once-a-decade occurrence. Edgy fashion ads that are edgy for edginess's sake have become the edgy standard, right edgy Diesel? Diesel has been, completely inexplicably to me, lauded by duped ad critics over the last decade for creating "anti-advertising" advertising. Hmm. I think "anti-good" advertising is a more accurate term for their lazy Warholian crap.

Below we have two recent examples of edgy fashion ads. On the left is a hackneyed Diesel effort targeting the fcuk hoi polloi. I got the second ad in that edgy campaign for you Andr : A Devil man flashing me the peace sign. On the right is a poster for John Varvatos that, while certainly not brilliant, works. Why? Because I fucking said so, that's why. Also, to use a man who usually doesn't wear a shirt, let alone a suit, is a, well, somewhat edgy move.

This image was lost some time after publication.

94 years ago, liar H.K. McCann launched his NYC ad agency with the slogan "Truth Well Told." That was a Big Fat Lie. Advertising copywriter copyranter brings you instances of Ad Lies and the Lying Liars who sell them.

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