Kendall Jenner and Gigi Hadid have both appeared on the cover of W magazine's 10th Anniversary Art Issue... with no knees. To be fair though, that wasn't the weirdest thing to come out of the US publication's Placebo Pets project, but it was enough to freak us out.

Kendall Jenner and Gigi HadidKendall Jenner and Gigi Hadid team up for W Magazine's Placebo Pets

The cover shot featured the young models in matching retro-print Louis Vuitton dresses and shoes, with Kendall clutching a puppy and Gigi handing out cans of soda as they stepped outside a pair of camping tents, alongside another model called Lauren Devine. But apparently, the photo-editing team were a little distracted when it came to amending the err... imperfections; both models were left looking like human Barbie dolls with no knees.

More: Kendall Jenner testifies against stalker

The spread, arranged by Lizzie Fitch and Ryan Trecartin and photographed by Jason Kibbler, was part of the Placebo Pets project, and in the other images the models were turned into 'domesticated humanoid pets' with their facial features distorted through prosthetics. 

A photo posted by W magazine (@wmag) on

Both the 'Keeping Up With The Kardashians' star and the girlfriend of Zayn Malik are huge fans of the animal filters on Snapchat, which have no doubt inspired this new spread. But what has influenced the piece most is Fitch and Trecartin's interest in the relationship between people and their domesticated animal companions. 

'There's a certain power that animals have over us when they respond to us in unexpected, friendly ways', Trecartin said in the magazine. 'And it's really them domesticating us almost more than us domesticating them, because they're training us to want them. Training and taming something is not one-sided. It's a dynamic.'

Returning to the Snapchat idea, he explores the idea that social media treats us in much the same way as our pets. 'We created social media, but then it changed us because we interacted with it. Because it has its own rules and limitations', he said. 'And it's not us, even though it is us. And then it transforms us and transforms the next thing that happens just by existing. You can't really avoid being trained.'

A photo posted by W magazine (@wmag) on