Lara Stone is 'blacked up' for French Vogue
Dutch supermodel Lara Stone's face and body were plastered in dark brown make up in this month's French Vogue, alongside other shots showing her as white.
The text alongside the pictures make no reference to why the model, 25, has been made up the way she has.
A brief introduction to the feature merely says she has a "sense of humour".
Another image of model Lara Stone
US website Jezebel branded the magazine's editor Carine Roitfeld and photographer Steven Klein as "culturally insensitive" for publishing the pictures.
The website said: "What Klein and Roitfeld should know is that painting white people black for the entertainment of other white people is offensive in ways that stand entirely apart from cultural context.
"France and Australia may not have the United States' particular history of minstrel shows but something about the act of portraying a white woman as black ought to sound an alarm, somewhere."
SOS Racisme, a french anti-racist group, said that the pictures were "tactless".
The group's president, Dominic Sopo said: "If the aim was artistic and not to pass off the model as a black girl, the fact that it produces such reactions shows that the world of images – advertising, fashion, whatever – is now paying for its long tradition of not allowing black people to show their bodies in public."
French Vogue said it was unaware that it had caused any offence.
