Spot anything in this Ralph Lauren Blue Label that seems kind of...off? Just one clue: in real life, the model, Filippa Hamilton, doesn't actually double for a Giacometti.
This snap of the ad was posted to the mock site Photoshop Disasters last Tuesday — the writer crowed, "Make her head bigger than her pelvis! Do it!" Xeni Jardin at Boing Boing noticed, and made the comment, "Dude, her head's bigger than her pelvis." But that relatively mild criticism of the unbelievable ad garnered the blog's ISP a cease-and-desist letter for reposting the picture.
Note to Ralph Lauren: it's not an infringement of your copyright if content you own is reproduced for purposes such as criticism, comment, or news reporting. No, really. Look it up. The company more than earned Cory Doctorow's indignant response.
Photoshop Disasters apparently received a similar threatening letter, since its post — though cached, for now, by Google — has been taken down.
Who is this woman 'shopped down to a spindly creature by Lauren's minions? She's 23-year-old French-Swedish model Filippa Hamilton — Countess Filippa Hamilton, to be precise. She's a Ralph Lauren favorite — in fact, she's on the brand's website right now. Check out the terrible job the retoucher did when he or she cut a path around Hamilton's hair to change the color of the shirt:
Hamilton has been featured in various ads for Ralph Lauren since her teens; up until now, the brand has never Photoshopped her into the likeness of a Bratz doll.
And in this July, 2009, editorial for Russian Elle magazine, shot by Fabio Chizzola, she doesn't look half bad, either.
Ralph Lauren should put a little less effort into crafting cease-and-desist letters guaranteed to harness the Streisand Effect, and a lot more into the quality of its post-production.
Ralph Lauren Opens New Outlet In The Uncanny Valley [BoingBoing]
The Criticism That Ralph Lauren Doesn't Want You To See [BoingBoing]