When a company is paying you to shoot a campaign or a lookbook, those pictures have one primary purpose: TO SELL THEIR PRODUCT. The moral & ethical implications of this argument go way beyond the scope of a blog comment, but the sad fact is that this type of shoot more often than not needs to yield pictures in which everything – especially the models – look ‘perfect’. The pictures need to represent / illustrate a lifestyle and brand image that is beautiful, desirable, hyper-real and ideal, and invariably the only way to achieve that is through retouching.

Obviously this is not applicable to every campaign or lookbook for every product, but there is a prominent and widespread mainstream – ranging from luxury brands to high street brands to small independent brands – that all favour this type of representation. In addition, some of those brand’s insistence on exploiting / associating themselves with celebrities often necessitates even more retouching than would normally be required. This is why brands like Louis Vuitton insist on shooting campaigns with Madonna, and end up having her retouched to hell; and brands like Mango insist on using Kate Moss and have to have her retouched to within an inch of her life.

SK