A new racy billboard ad featuring Eva Mendes in her underwear has brought the traffic in New York City on standstill.
The Cuban-American star –dressed just in a skimpy bra and panties — joins a scantily-clad male model in a controversial new Calvin Kleins. The billboard spans an entire block on Houston St. in the city’s trendy SoHo neighborhood and has many New Yorkers complaining that the image is borderline “pornography,” according to The New York Daily News.
Calvin Klein has a long history of advertisements — and so does Eva. The Hitch star appeared in a CK fragrance campaign that was pulled in the U.S. last year after censors ruled it was obscene.
After public outrage, Calvin Klein replaced a racy billboard in the SoHo section of New York City.
The provocative ad, featuring a topless model and three young men, provoked controversy in the Big Apple after it appeared on the side of a building in the trendy neighborhood earlier this month.
Eva Mendes sizzles in a series of new ads for Calvin Klein Jeans.
Joining the Cuban-American actress in the Autumn/Winter collection ad campaign is male model Jamie Dornan.
The bulked-up hunk was previously featured in two Calvin Klein Jeans advertising campaigns; alongside supermodel Natalia Vodianova in the Fall of 2004 and catwalk queen Kate Moss in the Fall of 2006.
“Calvin Klein Jeans and Calvin Klein Underwear are both such iconic American brands, that to play a part in these campaigns is a true honor,” Dornan says. “Working alongside the sensationally sexy Eva Mendes on both shoots was incredible.”
Denim design house Calvin Klein can add another controversy to its lengthy legacy of pushing the envelope. CK has come under fire for a sexually suggestive billboard it perched atop a busy intersection in New York City’s trendy SoHo neighborhood this week.
The giant 50-foot-tall billboard advertising Calvin Klein jeans, features two young men and a young woman entangled half-clothed (a male and female kissing) as a third man lays at their feet, either undressing or putting his pants back on, ABC News writes.
Some neighborhood residents are so disturbed by the racy billboard that they are vowing to boycott the often-edgy designer.
“Not only the billboard, but a company — a corporate giant in America — feels it appropriate to put a semi-nude photograph in a major billboard in a high-traffic area where tens of thousands of children see this kind of activity going on,” said Randy Sharp, director of special projects for the American Family Association, a Christian organization that promotes preservation of traditional values.
