About

Justin Bieber's Calvin Klein Ads refer to a series of black-and-white print advertisements and a video commercial for the American fashion company Calvin Klein featuring pop star Justin Bieber.

Origin

On January 6th, 2015, Calvin Klein released a black-and-white advertisement in which Bieber is shown playing the drums and embracing model Lara Stone (shown below).

The same day, Bieber posted several print ads from the Calvin Klein campaign on Instagram^[1] (shown below).

Spread

On January 7th, 2015, the Yes It's Funny YouTube channel uploaded a parody of the Calvin Klein ad, which gained over 160,000 views and 45 comments in the first month (shown below).

On the following day, the pop culture blog BreatheHeavy^[4] published a leaked unretouched photo from one of the Calvin Klein ads, which showed Bieber's crotch and musculature had been enlarged with photo editing software. The images were subsequently removed from the article, which claimed Bieber's legal team sent a cease and desist letter threatening legal action.

On January 9th, a GIF featuring the before-and-after retouched Calvin Klein ad was submitted to the /r/gifs^[5] subreddit. On January 10th, Redditor Notvfunny submitted a post calling for viewers to photoshop one of the Bieber ads to the /r/photoshopbattles^[3] subreddit, where it gathered more than 3,700 votes (85% upvoted) and 1,100 comments in two weeks.

On January 17th, Saturday Night Live featured a sketch mocking the Calvin Klein ad, in which actress Kate McKinnon impersonates Bieber while wearing a white tank top and Calvin Klein underwear (shown below).

Search Interest

External References