Every morning on the Northern Line platform we are faced with this advertisement for a Lavazza coffee machine featuring a particularly splendid young lady posed in a giant coffee cup (unless she is supposed to be a very small lady) in the pose of Da Vinci's Vitruvian man.
There is something about her that Agent Triple P particularly responds to but then we have always been fond of Italian women (and, indeed, Italy in general). We think that it is a combination of her severe hairdo, the wet look high-cut swimsuit and her athletic figure (we just love those thighs). In fact, we have no idea if she is Italian or not but, even if not she certainly looks Italian and nearly all the models featured in the calendar do have Italian names.
The picture was taken in New York in 2008 by Annie Leibovitz for Lavazza's 2009 calendar. The image shown on the current advert is cropped from the original calendar images which all had an Italian theme (understandably). It is, apparently, the Pirelli Calendar of coffee calendars and the company spend a fortune getting top photographers to work on it.
Two other striking images from the calendar appeal to Agent Triple P as well. The Trevi Fountain shot has been used on the Underground as well, although the young ladies prominent nipples have been airbrushed to protect us from...whatever these strange censor people think they are protecting us from.
Triple P's other favourite shot is of Elettra Rossellini Wiedemann (Isabella Rossellini's daughter) in a giant bowl of what must be bucatini (far too thick to be spaghetti!). It has to be my second favourite girl with pasta shot after Eve Herzigova's effort for Pirelli.
Annie shoots ElettraHooray for the Italians, in this increasingly politically correct world, that they can still put out advertisements featuring scantily clad women to advertise products which have absolutely nothing to do with the woman at all. Would it make me buy their coffee? Well, Triple P does not drink coffee, partly for medical reasons but mainly because it is a barbarians' drink which tastes like burnt mud. But if we did we might just be influenced by Lavazza's fetching Vitruvian woman. Advertising. It works.
