Why are there so many naked people in clothing ads?

I thought they were supposed to sell clothing. Am I wrong?

Bill Buckley once wondered why Abercrombie & Fitch put its catalogues in brown paper. I have never wondered this, but that's because I grew up at a time when Abercrombie & Fitch was a place where people bought over-priced and pseudo-preppy crap, and not a real store where people bought clothing for the outdoors.

Perhaps this is why they have so many naked people. It distracts the idiots who shop there from perceiving that they don't need and shouldn't want the clothing.

What really gets me, though, is the sweater ads with naked people. Sweaters are for cold weather. You would think, perhaps, that if one person in the photo was wearing a sweater and a scarf, the other people would at least be wearing shirts. In whatever bizarre universe Gap inhabits, however, temperature is extremely localized.

There's a time and a place for nudity, and it's not clothing advertisements.