LOS ANGELES—The campaign for musician Kanye West's sixth collection in his Yeezy clothing line has generated a lot of buzz for its subversive utilization of social media—specifically, by having an array of models and media personalities re-create the original paparazzi-style shots from the collection's digital look book of West's wife, Kim Kardashian West, and then post the pictures to their own Instagram and Twitter pages.
Something the mainstream coverage of the campaign has largely swept under the rug, however (that is, outside of TMZ, natch), is its enlistment of adult stars Abella Danger and Lela Star ... who join the likes of Jaden Smith's model ex Sarah Snyder, Abigail Ratchford and the one and only Paris Hilton in striking Kim-clone poses for the Yeezy Season 6 viral onslaught.
For Star's part, she went as far as to pose fully nude for several of her pictures—which may or may not account for many outlets not calling attention to her participation—though her naughty bits did get blurred out to keep things quasi-SFW.
Danger told AVN that social media in fact played a key role in landing her the opportunity. "Brazzers hired me to shoot a parody scene [of] Kanye West's music video to that song 'Fade,'" she explained. "And they took a bunch of pictures while I was shooting that scene and posted them on Instagram, and Kanye West saw them and he thought that I was super cute, I guess, and then he had his people contact [Danger's agent Mark] Spiegler, and they hired me to model for Yeezy Season 6."
Calling West a "marketing genius" for the publicity ploy, Danger recounted that the shoot took about 8 to 10 hours—"longer than it does to shoot most pornos"—and said that though West was not on hand to oversee it, "They told me that he personally picked me himself and I was super honored by that. It was really fun, everyone was really nice."
Genius or no, there has been some question raised about whether or not the campaign is entirely legal; according to TheFashionLaw.com, it may violate a Federal Trade Commission statute that requires imagery used as part of a formal ad campaign to be clearly identified as such (in a case like this, that might be accomplished by using a hashtag along the lines of "#ad" to indicate that the pictured model didn't post the photo of herself in Yeezy garb for her own health).
Expounded TheFashionLaw, the campaign "could prove to be wildly problematic, largely because there is a very good chance most consumers have no idea that any of the imagery is actually part of a formal ad campaign (and that the models are likely being compensated in some way—even if it is just free clothes—to post these images on their accounts)."
It goes on to note, "The FTC has stated that only 'a significant minority' of consumers need to be confused—or 'misled'—as to the nature of an ad campaign for that campaign to be deemed 'deceptive' in accordance with the FTC Act, a federal law in the U.S."
Whether any legal troubles come to pass for West over the campaign remains to be seen, but in the meantime, enjoy Abella Danger and Lela Star playing Kim K on their respective Instagram pages as follows: @DangerSheWrote, @LelaStaarr.
Pictured (l, r): Abella Danger, Lela Star
