Leibowitz gives Pirelli a makeover

WHAT IS the world coming to? First the Women's Institute strips off for a nude calendar and now Pirelli, beloved of car mechanics everywhere, has produced its millennium calendar with scarcely a nipple in sight.

Photographed by Annie Leibowitz, only the third woman to do the pictures for the calendar, it was described yesterday as a study of the female body celebrating its strength as well as its beauty. Gone are the garish colours and the pert buttocks artfully covered with sand. In their place is a quiet study of the female form in muted colours, showing every knotty vein and muscle.

Lisa Needham, of Pirelli, said: "We wanted to do something different for the millennium and this is very much using the body as sculpture."

Quite. But whether mechanics up and down the land will see it that way is another matter.