Just a few months after L’oreal was bitch-slapped for slapping fake eyelashes on Penelope Cruz for her “Lashes that could reach for the stars” advert, another cosmetics company is in trouble for a similar offense. Unlike the Penelope Cruz mess though, Rimmel London is guilty of digitally enhancing the eyelashes of Kate Moss. Consequently, the offending adverts for Rimmel’s “Magnif’eyes mascara” have been yanked by the Advertising Standards Authority, which held that Rimmel’s claim of “70 per cent more lash lift” that “could have misled viewers because it referred to a change in appearance, not actual lash length.” This conclusion seems rather illogical and merely a way to pull the adverts without finding any actual evidence, but whatever works, eh?

J Walter Thompson, the advertising agency behind Rimmel’s campaign, told the authority that Moss’s eyelashes were “cleaned up and enhanced” in post-production but did not explain the extent to which their appearance had been changed.

It insisted that Moss did not wear false lashes at the shoot but supplied no evidence to support its denial.

The ASA ruled: “Because we had not received documentary evidence that Kate Moss was not wearing false lashes in the ads, we concluded that the images of the eyelashes in the press and TV ads may have exaggerated the benefits of the product and were likely to mislead consumers.”

So, the ASA has ruled that Rimmel must not run this particular advert again, and in the future, the company must run a disclaimer within its adverts if it resorts to digital enhancement of a model’s eyelashes. According to the Daily Mail, the ASA was tipped off by two consumer complaints that the “traffic stopping” eyelashes in the advert couldn’t have possibly belonged to Kate Moss herself.

Look, we all know that, for the past several years, Kate Moss hasn’t much looked like any of her adverts or magazine shoots. Even Pete Doherty never recognized his former girlfriend in magazines, and while this could easily be explained by his drugged up state of mind, it’s a lot more than that. The unfortunate truth is that Kate Moss’ name carries her a lot further than her actual looks, and until now, nobody really cared.