Playboy Retro's Sexy Nude Body Painting from March 1968

From the March 1968 issue of Playboy comes this week’s #PlayboyRetro flashback, the “Brush-On Fashions” pictorial. Photographed by Mario Casilli (whose impressive resume includes 57 Playmate pictorials, including Playmates of the Year Linda Gamble, Christa Speck, Jo Collins, Connie Kreski, Claudia Jennings and Dorothy Stratten), the at the time provocative art of body painting was born out of the West Coast hippie culture sometime in the mid-’60s and had by 1968 made its way across America, from San Fran to Long Island and the East Village’s Electric Circus.

Dubbed at the time of publication as Playboy’s “fresh twist on the art of body painting: how to tell a bird by her plumage,” Casilli sought to showcase the model’s “vocation or avocation,” be it bird-watcher, teacher or musician, but knew good and well what our readers had come to see: “As with all great art,” said Casilli, “the crucial thing in body painting is to envision the beauty beneath the surface.”