Fingers are being wagged in the direction of designer Marc Jacobs and his go-to photographer Juergen Teller after the two men cast teen actress Dakota Fanning, 17, as a Lolita figure in Jacobs’ new Oh, Lola perfume ad.
In the ad, Fanning holds a phallic shaped bottle with a rose petal top near her crotch as she’s posed against a plain pink background in a gauzy dress, her gaze leveled steadily at the viewer.
The colors, background, shape of the bottle, Fanning’s age, her clothing and her expression, some say, is risque and recalls Russian writer Vladimir Nobokov’s exploited fictional child sex victim Lolita, who was abused by her much older stepfather Humbert Humbert in the acclaimed novel with the child’s name.
Most, if not all, of the complaints about the ad come from traditional media. The average viewer of this ad and the fashion kids who dream about being famous (and their parents who wonder what they’re doing wrong), will not get the literary reference of the advertisement, we think. And if they do, well, their college education has paid off.
This is the second ad Jacobs and Teller have shot with a flacon being situated near, or in proximity to, a model’s crotch and also the second time the designer has used Fanning in his promotions. The first ad featured a nude and glistening Jacobs placed dead center frame with a square bottle strategically placed in front of his gentitals. The name of the cologne? Bang.
Jacobs, in an interview recently with WWD, admitted that the risque Lolita-esque ad was intentional.
‘When we were speaking about who to use in the ads, I had recently seen “The Runaways”… I knew she could be this contemporary Lolita, seductive yet sweet,” Jacobs said.
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Dakota Fanning for Marc Jacobs.
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Marc Jacobs in his ad for Bang.
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Dakota Fanning in an early Marc Jacobs ad.
