This Head-Turning Calvin Klein Campaign Turned the Head of the Feds

When cute young models look a little too young

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Say what you want about his skills as a designer, Calvin Klein certainly earned his stripes as a marketer. This is the man who, by casting a salacious (and 15 year-old) Brooke Shields in a 1980 TV spot, sold 200,000 pairs of jeans the first week. In no time, America caught on: Klein’s ads used breasts and bulges to sell the clothes meant to cover them up.

But in the mid 1990s, he took things too far with a campaign that not only featured models who weren’t just half naked, they looked barely clear of puberty.

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