John Lewis taking piss now

[TwistedWonder]

As if their stance on refusing to safeguard their female staff wasn’t bad enough - they seriously have to be taking the piss now with this.

No actual female models available?

This is exactly what it is.

That's it,

It is an extremely strange and unattractive advert. The bloke looks as though he is sizing up the tree to hang his collection of pickled heads as baubles.

Agree. I’ve looked at all the photos and they all look badly styled.

So, unless the stylists and photographers are engaged in a secret competition to see who can make it look the most unappealing, my conclusion is that the dress would probably look terrible in real life as well, and be a waste of £165.

There’ll be a glut of them on Vinted come January for about £25 labels still attached

Twilight Zone??

I don’t mind seeing men modelling (or generally wearing) women’s clothes or vice versa. Very boring and miserable picture though.

Did anyone read the naked civil servant? Fifty years ago, 100 years ago men were incredibly brave and non-conforming to wear dresses and make up - more power to them. Boys who do it now are the saddest and most conventional and sheeplike individuals who bow down before the current thing with the total approval of all "good thinkers", teachers, Guardian, HR and the nanny state. These NPCs have very high rates of mental illness and are not in any way non-conforming.

Well that's going to sell loads of dresses to women...what even is the point? Men can wear dresses, sure, but what percentage of them do? And I bet they don't shop at JL! So a bunch of middle aged women get the pleasure of this ridiculousness.

His head looks very wee!

This is a French connection model not JL. Says at the bottom.

It’s a FC dress sold in JL and the photo is a mailing from JL to their clients

FC have the dress worn by a black woman on their advertising

Meh - really don't understand the concern here (apart from the white socks - definitely object to those).

‘Take that, you silly women!’

🙄

Lots of drive by scolders coming out on this thread.

Yes, that seems to be the main point. There's nothing whatsoever stopping a man from buying and wearing this or any other dress, regardless of whether he identifies as a woman or as a bloke who just likes wearing dresses.

It's just that the vast majority of people who would want to wear it will be women, so it's a very odd choice indeed to ignore virtually all of your potential customers for that garment, who naturally want to see what it looks like on a female body.

The same as, if they were selling a climbing frame in their toy department, there's nothing at all stopping anybody of any age from buying one and enjoying using it themselves - but it would seem very peculiar indeed if they decided to show it in their catalogue being used by a group of 30yo builders or a bunch of pensioners, rather than by actual children who would represent 99.999% of the people who actually want to use it.

No, I mean the one in my post at 21.10. That’s the JL photo that’s in the dress section, OP’s photo is a different one, ‘sent in a direct mailing to their customers’.

The model looks like a serial killer eyeing up his next victim over his shoulder. Hardly the spirit of Christmas.
Which idiot thought this was a good idea?

Isn't John Lewis supposed to be slightly aspirational? And Christmas supposed to be festive.
To misquote Regina George "that's the frickin ugliest christmas tree, outfit and living room I've ever seen."
I don't want any of what that advert is advertising, and, no, I don't particularly want to be 6'4 either.

I mean, how people want to dress up in the comfort of their own home is up to them...

.

It's the exact same glare that Mr Denton from The League Of Gentlemen would fire at anybody he feared may be planning to harm his precious toads!

It reminds me a little of the CK ads with Kate Moss that were made to look like basement porn. Kind of deliberately slightly shit so as to look edgy.

Anyway - I don't really believe "some men just like to wear dresses and then they are men's dresses." If they are made for women they don't really fit men, and men's "dresses" which are made for them aren't called dresses.

There are men who like to be highly edgy in terms of fashion, or are rock stars, which is totally legitimate but it's not that they just "like" those things. The whole point is to be unconventional and push a boundary. This is a small group, btw.

And apart from that there are men who want to dress as women, which is fine in some cases (on stage, Halloween, escape from prison) but not so much in others (peeping in women's toilets.)

I have an instinctive ick reaction to the image. I think it's because women have been so under attack that I feel the image purposefully mocks women. Once again men can be anything they choose - even if it's something that belongs to women and it's something women have and will suffer to obtain (unobtainable body proportions).
There's something very odd with the distorted view and childlike pose.

To be fair that's an incredibly ugly dress and even the most stunning human in the world would be hard pushed to make something quite so hideous look attractive.
But what is that photo / print / drawing in background meant to be?
The advert has a very 1970s feel to it, maybe that was the intention, I can almost smell the boiled cabbage and over cooked sprout aroma.
I'm assuming the clothes the model is wearing is for men, I think they might have their work cut out selling enough to make a profit.
No issue with men wearing dresses or skirts, but I would have thought the market would be very small. Still if JL want blokes to be their only target audience good luck with staying in business. Maybe whoever runs JL has had enough and wants to see the business fold, maybe they are hoping for an enormous payout?!