Violent ads deemed a fashion faux pas

'Be Caught Dead In It' ad for Auckland boutique fashion chain Superette. Photo / Supplied

An Auckland fashion boutique has been blasted for its billboard ad campaign which showed "sickening" images of models in violent death poses.

The adverts for upmarket clothing store Superette depicted a woman impaled on a metal fence and another lying in a pool of blood at the bottom of a staircase, and featured the tagline: "Be caught dead in it".

The ad campaign received worldwide attention and was criticised by the New York Times fashion blog The Cut, which labelled the ads "very creepy".

At least four people complained to the Advertising Standards Authority about the billboards, which were displayed in Auckland at Khyber Pass and Wellesley St West for six weeks last year.

V. Muir said the billboards could encourage young girls to commit suicide and had made her and her 14-year-old daughter "feel quite sick".

"Skinny models are one thing for our teenagers to cope with; are they now to be encouraged to commit suicide if they can't wear the right clothes?

Two other complainants said the adverts "glamourised violent death" and tried to be funny about the "very real experience of women being murdered in brutal ways".

R. Meiklejohn, who worked in the lift industry for 51 years, complained that a third advert in which a woman was crushed by a lift was "offensive".

Advertising agency DDB New Zealand, which created the ads for Superette, argued the adverts highlighted and exaggerated "creative thought".

The ASA upheld complaints about the billboards, which were ' "likely to cause serious and widespread offence".