Luxury fashion house Dolce & Gabbana has passed an Australian advertising review over its recent sultry promotional video that appeared to depict a threesome.
The one-minute ad featured singer Madonna and Cuban actor Alberto Guerro, alongside young German-Turkish model Tony Özkan, and was directed by Mert Alas. It marks twenty years of Dolce & Gabbana’s The One fragrances.
The ad, which featured across on-demand channels and can be found on YouTube (see below), depicts Madonna alongside two different men who appear separately in different scenes embracing, lying on a bed, and sharing dinner.
In one scene, the singer puts on hosiery while one man watches. In another scene, the woman lies on a bed with one man. She is wearing a negligee, and he is wearing pants and a vest. Other scenes include all of them sharing a meal.
A complaint was sent to Ad Standards on the grounds that the ad glorified threesomes, and depicts the woman wearing a negligee, touching two men and lying down with at least one.
Dolce & Gabbana did not provide a response to Ad Standards to address the complaint.
Within its assessment, an Ad Standards Community Panel found the ad depicted sexuality, but stopped short of breaching advertising standards, noting the intimate scenes were brief, mild and non-explicit.
While the characters were shown kissing and embracing on a bed, there was no suggestion of sexual activity as defined under the AANA Code of Ethics, and only partial nudity was observed. The relationships portrayed were considered consensual, including an implied dynamic involving more than one partner.
Importantly, the Panel stated the code does not limit how sexual preferences or relationships are represented, and highlighted that the ad was delivered via on-demand channels, which means it likely was targeted to an adult audience.
“While the Panel accepts that there would be members of the community who do not condone such open displays of intimacy or a suggestion that one person can have more than one intimate partner, it does not believe that, on a balance of probabilities, the content would be considered inappropriate by prevailing community standards.”
In the end, Ad Standards dismissed the complaint.