In 2007, the Italian label No.l.ita commissioned photographer Oliviero Toscani—already notorious for using shock imagery in Benetton advertising—to confront the fashion industry’s culture of extreme thinness. The resulting No.Anorexia campaign showed French model and anorexia survivor Isabelle Caro nude, visibly emaciated, and staring directly into the camera. Caro was reported to weigh roughly 31 kilograms (about 68 pounds) at the time, and she publicly described suffering from anorexia nervosa since adolescence. The billboard campaign appeared during Milan’s fashion season, turning her body into an enormous public argument about whether fashion advertising could expose an eating disorder without also exploiting the person afflicted by it. Toscani defended the images as an attempt to make anorexia impossible to ignore, while critics argued that the campaign transformed severe illness into another form of spectacle and used the same visual machinery of fashion advertising it claimed to condemn. Italian authorities and advertising regulators objected to the campaign, and the most controversial displays were removed or restricted after public backlash. Caro later became an international spokesperson against anorexia, but her health remained fragile; she died in 2010 at age 28 from complications associated with the illness. The campaign remains a landmark example of fashion’s ethically unstable use of shock advertising: it raised visibility for eating disorders while provoking enduring questions about consent, medical vulnerability, nudity, and the commercialization of suffering.
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AI concept artworkArchive Record · 2000s
The 2007 No.Anorexia Billboard Shocked Italy with Isabelle Caro’s Emaciated Body
No.l.ita and photographer Oliviero Toscani / 2000s
In 2007, the Italian label No.l.ita commissioned photographer Oliviero Toscani—already notorious for using shock imagery in Benetton advertising—to confront the fashion industry’s culture of extreme thinness. The resulting No.Anorexia campaign showed French model and anorexia survivor Isabelle Caro nude, visibly emaciated, and staring directly into the camera. Caro was reported to weigh roughly 31 kilograms (about 68 pounds) at the time, and she publicly described suffering from anorexia nervosa since adolescence. The billboard campaign appeared during Milan’s fashion season, turning her body into an enormous public argument about whether fashion advertising could expose an eating disorder without also exploiting the person afflicted by it. Toscani defended the images as an attempt to make anorexia impossible to ignore, while critics argued that the campaign transformed severe illness into another form of spectacle and used the same visual machinery of fashion advertising it claimed to condemn. Italian authorities and advertising regulators objected to the campaign, and the most controversial displays were removed or restricted after public backlash. Caro later became an international spokesperson against anorexia, but her health remained fragile; she died in 2010 at age 28 from complications associated with the illness. The campaign remains a landmark example of fashion’s ethically unstable use of shock advertising: it raised visibility for eating disorders while provoking enduring questions about consent, medical vulnerability, nudity, and the commercialization of suffering.
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