Packaging
The July and August 2001 cover art of Is This It is by Colin Lane and features a photograph of a woman's nude bottom and hip, with a leather-gloved hand suggestively resting on it. The model was later revealed to be Lane's then-girlfriend, who explained that the photoshoot was spontaneous and happened after she came out of the shower naked. Lane recalled that a stylist had left the glove in his apartment and noted, "We did about 10 shots. There was no real inspiration, I was just trying to take a sexy picture." The result was included in the book The Greatest Album Covers of All Time, in which Grant Scott, one of the editors, noted influences from the daring works of Helmut Newton and Guy Bordin in its design. Scott concludes, "It’s either a stylish or graphically strong cover or a sexist Smell the Glove travesty." Although British retail chains HMV and Woolworths objected to the photograph's controversial nature, they stocked the album without amendment.
The group deliberately left out the grammatically correct question mark from the album title because aesthetically, "it did not look right". The booklet insert contains stylized separate portraits of The Strokes, Raphael, Gentles, and Bowersock, all photographed by Lane. For the American market and the October 2001 release, the cover art of Is This It was changed to a microscopic close-up of particle collisions. RCA product manager Dave Gottlieb commented that "it was straight up a band decision", while Gentles indicated that Casablancas had wanted it to appear globally. According to the band's manager, the frontman phoned him before the Japan and Europe release and said, "I found something even cooler than the a ... picture." At the time, the Lane photograph was already at the presses and was included in the July and August 2001 versions. The Strokes' 2003 biography mentions the fear of objections from America's conservative retail industry and right-wing lobby as reasons for the artwork's alteration.
Read more about this topic: Is This It