The ad, which ran in cutting-edge style magazine i-D, features the bottom half of a woman dressed only in a pair of Patrick Cox shoes next to the men.
One of the men is lying on his back with his legs in the air, while the other is crouching down beside him and looks like he is about to mount him. The photograph was taken by risque fashion photographer David LaChapelle. The ad is part of Patrick Cox's locker room-themed spring/summer season campaign, which also features the model Sophie Dahl.
The complainant, a member of the public from London, objected to the ad because it "seemed to depict an act of buggery", and would likely cause widespread offense.
i-D magazine defended its decision to run the ad. In its submission to the Advertising Standards Authority it said the picture is typical of photographer LaChapelle's "playful and often erotic" style, which its readers are used to.
The publisher maintained that although the ads were homo-erotic, they believed it was less overtly sexual than other images in the mag.
Speaking recently about the ad, Patrick Cox said: "The ads look like a 1950s porn film. Sophie is in a state of tousled undress, with semi-clad boys and girls drifting round her in suggestive positions.
"To start with, it was a nightmare: Sophie insisted she was not going to take her clothes off. David [LaChapelle] was saying: 'I work with models. I don't work with celebrities.' I told Sophie: 'Of course you can wear what you like. But maybe if we just pull this strap over your shoulder a bit more...' We got there in the end."
i-D told the watchdog that it believed that its readers would not be offended by the images because the company believed they were "cutting edge, experimental, daring and creative" people and described its advertising as "colourful, fun and beautiful".
The company presented other images from the magazine to demonstrate that the style of the ads were not unusual in a magazine like this.
The ASA banned the ads because they were "deliberately ambiguous and sexually provocative" and because 5.5% of i-D readers are aged 15-17 years old, and it said the image was too explicit for 15-year-olds.
Patrick Cox said that its spring/summer advertising schedule was over, and that it had no intention of running the ad again.
The fact that the ad has been censured could cause some confusion in the industry after a raunchy ad by Gucci, which appeared in Vogue and sparked a public outcry, escaped censure by the ASA.
The Gucci "pubic enemy" ad that ran in Vogue in February showed a woman with her pants partially pulled down to expose the letter "G" shaved into her pubic hair, and a man kneeling down beside her.
The ad was blasted by consumer groups and was attacked in a full-page article in the Daily Mail, but was cleared by the watchdog.
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