Have you ever been on Pornhub? If you want to see Diesel’s Spring intimates campaign, you might very well have to head to the site. The brand, led by creative director Nicola Formichetti, is planning to place its underwear ads, starring models Grace Mahary and Trevor Signorino, on Pornhub, YouPorn, Grindr, and Tinder. (The brand’s other ad imagery stars Joe Jonas and Kiko Mizuhara, along with a slew of other models, and will not appear on the aforementioned sites and apps.)
“To launch our new underwear on Pornhub is like . . . hello!” Formichetti told Dazed. “At Diesel, we want to talk about things that not everyone else is talking about—I like that we get to do that. Sexuality is still a taboo in today’s world . . . We all go on websites like Pornhub, you know?”
Formichetti isn’t wrong about the allure of sex. According to Alexa ratings, Pornhub is the 66th most-visited website in the world, and YouPorn is the 172nd. As for the apps, Tinder boasts 1.4 billion swipes per day in 196 countries, while Grindr claims 7 million users worldwide, 1 million of whom are active each minute.
Diesel’s decision to partner with dating apps and porn sites is just the latest in a string of high-fashion brands embracing sexualized marketing. In the summer, Calvin Klein Jeans announced an ad campaign on Tinder featuring models in various states of undress accompanied by imagined sexts along the lines of “Hahah, a light threesome never hurt anyone ☺☺☺.” Earlier this week, J.W.Anderson streamed its Fall 2016 menswear show exclusively on Grindr. As unsexy as Jonathan Anderson’s clothing can tend to be—is that a snail on your pants or are you just excited to see me?—the partnership drew viewership in the hundreds of thousands. “I think fashion is a sexy platform as well, ultimately,” Anderson told The New York Times of the decision to partner with the app. “We’re all humans, so we all have to be somewhat sexually attractive to someone. That’s the name of the game, with clothing.”
These sex-centric campaigns are in line with the return of provocation on the runways. Pieces like Anthony Vaccarello’s super-slit skirts, Saint Laurent’s see-through slips, and Alexander Wang’s pole-dancer prints arrive after a period of almost prudish fashion. (Show me a garment less sexy than Céline’s much-copied clergywear of Spring 2011 or Prada’s boxy scrubs of the same season.) In fact, not since the days of Tom Ford’s X-rated Gucci ads and McQueen’s Bumster trousers in the ’90s has fashion been so openly sexy or sexualized. Today, a sheer dress—or even no top at all, ahem, Jacquemus—barely registers, and following Rick Owens’s bold display of male genitalia for Fall 2015, it seems there’s no area of the human form too taboo to show off on the runway.
This embrace of sexuality—and ideas that go with it, like gender fluidity—can be read as a good thing for fashion writ large, but it comes with its fair share of issues. Discussing J.W.Anderson’s show, the Times reported rumors of modeling agencies hesitant to send models to appear in the show because of the salacious nature of its live-stream host site. What’s more, the sites in question are visited predominantly by men. Pornhub’s 2015 annual report shows that 76 percent of its users are male.
Whether other brands will choose to advertise in X-rated places is yet to be seen, but if the number of users and rate of engagement continues to rise, it seems likely to occur. Consider this just another topic to add to your list of daily fashion conversations, and one much steamier than speculating who will get that Dior job.