In November, Balenciaga dropped its holiday ad campaign featuring children holding teddy bears in bondage harnesses and costumes. (The BDSM accessories were also on the runway at Balenciaga’s show at Paris Fashion Week.) The backlash against the images has been swift, with the hashtag #cancelBalenciaga trending across Twitter and TikTok and many accusing the brand and its creative director, Demna, of condoning pedophilia and child exploitation. In a separate ad that dropped on November 21 promoting Balenciaga’s spring/summer 2023 collection, a bag from the fashion house’s collaboration with Adidas was photographed atop copies of what appear to be documents from the Supreme Court case United States v. Williams, a ruling that upheld the PROTECT Act, which increased federal protections against child pornography. Both campaigns quickly became a conservative talking point and sparked conspiracy theories.
Since then, right-wing conspiracy theorists have latched on to and circulated photos taken out of context from the Instagram account of stylist Lotta Volkova that portrayed scenes of violence and satanic images. According to a representative, Volkova hasn’t worked with Balenciaga since 2017.
How did Balenciaga respond?
On November 22, the fashion house issued two statements via its Instagram Stories apologizing for the plush bears, which they said “ should not have been featured with children in this campaign,” as well as the “unsettling documents” in the separate spring/summer campaign: “We take this matter very seriously and are taking legal action against the parties responsible for creating the set and including unapproved items for our spring 23 campaign photoshoot. We strongly condemn abuse of children in any form. We stand for children’s safety and well-being.”
Meanwhile, Gabriele Galimberti, the photographer behind the holiday campaign, released a statement distancing himself from the imagery. “I am not in a position to comment on Balenciaga’s choices, but I must stress that I was not entitled in whatsoever manner to neither chose the products, nor the models, nor the combination of the same,” he wrote. “As a photographer, I was only and solely requested to lit the given scene, and take the shots according to my signature style.”
On December 2, Demna apologized on his Instagram, taking responsibility for the ads featuring the teddy bears: “As much as I would sometimes like to provoke a thought through my work, I would NEVER have an intention to do that with such an awful subject as child abuse that I condemn. Period.” The designer guaranteed steps will be taken to “avoid similar mistakes in the future” and protect children’s welfare. Demna did not seem to address the campaign featuring the court documents in his statement.
On the same day, Cédric Charbit, president and CEO of Balenciaga, apologized for the campaigns in a post to the house’s Instagram. Charbit outlined new internal methods in place, like hiring an external agency to “assess and evaluate” Balenciaga’s content, noting the “current process for content validation has failed.” The company has also created a fund to “help make a difference protecting children.”
And what about celebrities, like Kim Kardashian, who’ve worked with the brand?
On November 27, Kim Kardashian — a vocal supporter of the brand who previously starred in her own campaign for it and recently included a cameo from Balenciaga’s creative director, Demna, on her Hulu show, The Kardashians — issued a statement on Instagram and Twitter. “I have been quiet for the past few days, not because I haven’t been disgusted and outraged by the recent Balenciaga campaigns,” she wrote. Her statement went on to say she is currently reevaluating her future relationship with the brand, “basing it off their willingness to accept accountability for something that should have never happened to begin with.”
Julia Fox, who hasn’t worked with the brand, made her own series of statements on TikTok. “I have zero relationship with the brand. I’ve never even been to one of their shows, they haven’t invited me,” Fox said. “Regardless, I think it’s horrific and when I was reading and watching all the videos I literally felt sick to my stomach.” She went on to say that this was not a problem of Hollywood or the fashion industry but an issue with “men.”
How did Balenciaga get here?
Balenciaga is known for its unconventional campaigns and shows such as runway presentations in which models trudge through mud and blizzardlike conditions in high-end, expensive clothing. In her review of the brand’s spring 2023 show, our fashion critic Cathy Horyn wrote, “Of late, Demna’s choices have been sometimes morally questionable.” Balenciaga has become synonymous with subversiveness, and though the father of one of the child models featured in the campaign told the Daily Mail he believed the campaign was “blown out of all proportion,” this most recent campaign crossed the line for many consumers from provocative to harmful.
What is this about a lawsuit?
On November 25, Balenciaga filed a $25 million lawsuit, which it has since dropped, against North Six, Inc. and set designer Nicholas Des Jardins over the controversial campaign image featuring the court documents (which was separate from the imagery featuring the teddy bears). The suit claimed that the defendants included the Williams documents “without Balenciaga’s knowledge or authorization” and went on to say that, as a result of the “defendant’s misconduct, members of the public, including the news media, have falsely and horrifically associated Balenciaga with the repulsive and deeply disturbing subject of the court decision.”
Some criticized the lawsuit as an attempt by Balenciaga to absolve itself of culpability. According to Des Jardins’s agent, Gabriela Moussaieff, her client was “being used as a scapegoat” by the fashion house. “Everyone from Balenciaga was on the shoot and was present on every shot and worked on the edit of every image in post production,” Moussaieff said in a statement to the Washington Post, noting that the documents in the photos “were obtained from a prop house that were rental pieces used [for] photo shoots.”
What has the reaction been since the campaign?
On November 28, Business of Fashion rescinded its 2022 Global Voices Award offer to Demna noting that it holds “the safety of children in the highest regard.” In a statement posted on Instagram later that day, the brand said, “Our plush bear bags and the Gift collection should not have been featured with children. This was a wrong choice by Balenciaga, combined with our failure in assessing and validating images. The responsibility for this lies with Balenciaga alone.” (As of November 28, the bears no longer appear for sale on the company’s website.)
That same day, a street artist in London appears to have defaced the storefront of Balenciaga’s flagship, stenciling “paedophilia” on one of the windows, according to Newsweek. There were also reports of a store near the Beverly Hills shop on Rodeo Drive being defaced.
“I did it due to the abhorrent photoshoots Balenciaga did,” the artist told the outlet.
This post has been updated.
