A poster of a second impossibly thin Ralph Lauren model has emerged in Sydney, landing the exclusive fashion house in more hot water.
The blogging website Photoshop Disasters posted an image today of an unknown model with a tiny waist posing in a Ralph Lauren advertisement.
The poster appears at the front of the Ralph Lauren store, located inside the Queen Victoria Building on George Street.
Ninemsn has also uncovered what appears to be the original image on Ralph Lauren's Australian website, plus another digitally altered version of the same photograph in which the model's already small waist is even narrower.
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Ralph Lauren is yet to respond to ninemsn's requests for a comment on the poster, which was used to advertise its Spring 2009 Black Label collection.
But online bloggers were quick to express their disgust.
"Why don't they just show their clothes on skeletons ... or are those not skinny enough?" Elizabeth wrote in a post on Photoshop Disasters.
"One ridiculously Photoshopped image is laughable, but a collection of them is grotesque.
"God I walk past this every day... eventually it just blends into the background but if I stop and look at it, it's still shocking," blogger Morgan wrote.
The controversy comes just a week after Ralph Lauren was forced to admit it had doctored an image of model Filippa Hamilton, who today revealed she was fired by the fashion house for being "too fat".
The image, in which Ms Hamilton's waist appears smaller than her head, sent blogging websites into overdrive.
In a statement, the company said the "very distorted image of a woman's body" was "mistakenly released" and displayed in the Japanese department store.
Speaking publicly about the controversy for the first time, Ms Hamilton said Ralph Lauren did not renew her contract because she was "too large."
"They fired me because they said I was overweight and I couldn't fit in their clothes anymore," Ms Hamilton, 23, who worked for the company since she was 15, told the Daily News.
She said she considered Polo Ralph Lauren her second family.
Ms Hamilton, a New York resident who is half-Swedish and was raised in France, has been looking for another job since she was let go in April, said Jesse Derris, her spokesman at Sunshine Sachs & Associates.
She has not decided whether to sue, Mr Derris said.
The photo's emaciated depiction of her, with hips about as narrow as her head, could make young women "think that it's normal to look like that — and it's not," the 178cm tall, 55kg model told NBC's Today show.
"I saw my face on this super-extremely skinny girl, which is not me; it's not healthy, it's not right," she said.
Polo Ralph Lauren Corporation is contending that it dismissed Ms Hamilton because of a contract dispute.
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