U.K.'s Advertising Standards Agency is an old-fashioned complaint department, acting as a sympathetic ear to a small handful of pearl-clutching Brits.
But it turns out the agency, which specializes in banning (potentially) offensive ads, has fielded about 431,100 complaints in its 50-year history -- that's a lot of pearl-clutching. So which fashion ad has ignited the most controversy over the years?
Look no further than the ASA's newly-released annual report, in which the agency happily reports its "top ten most complained about ads of all time." There, nestled among the scaremongering PSAs and violent car adverts, is Sophie Dahl's famous ad for Yves Saint Laurent Opium perfume, which made a splash back in 2000.
The controversial YSL spot, which features Dahl lying on her back completely naked, received 948 complaints, making it the eighth most-complained-about. According to the ASA, "We agreed with public complaints that a poster ad for Opium perfume featuring a naked Sophie Dahl was sexually suggestive and, in an untargeted medium, likely to cause serious or widespread offence."
The campaign first made headlines in 2000 when the French fashion house plastered the image of red-headed Dahl, unclothed but for some sparkly jewels and a pair of heels and posing suggestively, on billboards around the country. Shot by Steven Meisel, Tom Ford - who was then the newly-appointed creative director of YSL - hoped the advert would put the then-ailing brand back on the fashion map whilst also giving a nod to house's history of sexual provocation and female liberation.
Ford's technique worked and the image has since become synonymous with the house, and Opium - which was first launched in 1977 - remains one of YSL's best-known scents.
The ASA received 948 complaints that the image was too sexually suggestive and unsuitable to be seen by children. As a result it was removed from billboards, but was still allowed to be used in appropriate magazines.
