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Saturday 30 August

 


Dove beauty ads retouched?

Dove beauty advert

They were the ground-breaking adverts that made British women proud of their bodies - whatever shape or size - but according to reports the ad campaigns featuring 'real' women were in fact retouched.

Dove's Campaign For Real Beauty adverts made it their mission to photograph women in their underwear with curves and cellulite, rather than the traditional skinny models. However, an expert who worked on the photographs has claimed that he retouched them.

Pascal Dangin, a well-known retoucher of fashion pictures who does regular work for fashion magazines and fashion brands including Dior and Balenciaga, has claimed the Dove models had a little help and were far from the real deal.

In an interview with New Yorker magazine, Dangin claims he altered the photographs heavily.

Referring to the four-year-old campaign, Dangin said: 'Do you know how much retouching was on that? But it was great to do, a challenge, to keep everyone's skin and faces showing the mileage but not looking unattractive.'

Dove has this morning issued a statement which reads: 'Dove's mission is to make more women feel beautiful every day by widening the definition of beauty and inspiring them to take great care of themselves. Dove strives to portray women by accurately depicting their shape, size, skin color and age.



'The 'real women' ad referenced in recent media coverage was created and produced entirely by Ogilvy, the Dove brand’s advertising agency, from start to finish and the women's bodies were not digitally altered.


'Pascal Dangin worked with photographer Annie Leibovitz (Ogilvy has never employed Mr Dangin on the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty), who did the photography for the launch of the Dove ProAge campaign, a new campaign within the Campaign for Real Beauty.

There was an understanding between Dove and Ms Leibovitz that the photos would not be retouched - the only actions taken were the removal of dust from the film and minor color correction.'

Leibovitz herself, meanwhile, has added: 'Let's be perfectly clear - Pascal does all kinds of work - but he is primarily a printer - and only does retouching when asked to. The idea for Dove was very clear at the beginning. There was to be NO retouching and there was not.'

Friday 9 May 2008


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I agree - they are not 'REAL' women - no rolls of fat, discoloured wonky teeth, blotchy skin, wide hips, different-sized boobs...the Dove women are models trying to look like real women!
Comment by allie on May 11 21:24

Who cares? It was (and is) a breath of fresh air to see women of size represented, touched-up or not. Hopefully this catches on with the print media and we can finally get a dose of reality in these ads. Hopefully the days of the anorexic toilet-huggers will come to an end soon. I for one, like a little meat on the bone.
Comment by bigpeeler on May 10 08:08

this is hardly Shocking news. We all know what the Beauty Industry&advertising is like
ie."Snake Oil,Smoke&Mirrors"
but if it made all of us
neurotic self-depreciating
girls feel a little bit better about are Bumps&Lumps then i dont feel perticually Jooped in the least
Comment by maire on May 09 17:19

Im not convinced, I was always suspicious as to why none of the models had stretch marks or cellulite!
Comment by traci carpenter on May 09 12:49

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