Balenciaga Ad Scandal Controversy Explained

The article covers detailed information on the Balenciaga Ad Scandal controversy, how celebrities and Balenciaga reacted, the lawsuit, and everything in detail.

So, without any further ado, let’s get started –

Balenciaga Ad Scandal Controversy Explained

Balenciaga Ad Scandal Controversy – Recently, the director of Balenciaga, Demna, launched a campaign featuring children holding bondages, harnesses, and costumes, which are shown as BDSM accessories. The artistic director showed the same visual on this week’s Paris Fashion Week runway at Balenciaga’s show.

Balenciaga was already in the headlines for selling destroyed sneakers at luxury prices and sending Kim Kardashian with a head-to-toe black bodysuit. However, netizens could not tolerate condoning pedophilia and child exploitation this time, and there’s a trend with the hashtag #cancelBalenciaga on TikTok and Twitter.

In an ad, Balenciaga launched its summer 2023 bag collection collaboration with Adidas and captured copies of the supreme court’s case, United States v. Williams, which was ruled to uphold the PROTECT Act to increase the protection of children from being exposed to pornography.

In mid of November, the two brands wrote an apology on their Instagram pages which 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 the abuse of children in any form. We stand for children’s safety and well-being.”

In a recent interview, the famous photographer, Gabriele Galimberti, for Balenciaga’s recent campaign of children holding teddy bears wearing BDSM accessories, said that he had no position to tell Balenciaga as it was the brand’s choice to do whatever they felt better, and he was not entitled to choose the product or models. He mentioned, “As a photographer, I was only and solely requested to light the given scene and take the shots according to my signature style.”

Famous celebrity Kim Kardashian a vocal supporter of the brand, recently said on her Hulu show that she has been quiet for the past few days because she hasn’t been disgusted and offended by the recent Balenciaga campaigns, she wrote on her Instagram and Twitter.

Her statement for the brand is currently reassessing her future relationship with Balenciaga, “basing it off their willingness to accept accountability for something that should have never happened to begin with.” Julia Fox has also said in a statement that she felt sick to her stomach seeing the pictures of children she wrote on her Instagram.

On Monday, Business of fashion canceled its 2022 Global Voices Award offer to Demna, saying that they “hold the safety of children very seriously.”

The brand posted on Instagram saying, “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 now, the post is no longer available on the brand’s Instagram page or website.

Balenciaga is always known for its unconventional fashion campaigns and styles; Cathy Horyn, a critic, wrote, “Of late, Demna’s choices have sometimes been morally questionable.”

Balenciaga apologized for the Gift Shop campaign and pledged to remove the advertisements from its social media channels.

A few hours later, they wrote a second apology addressing the Garde-Robe campaign posts that said, “We apologize for displaying unsettling documents in our campaign,” the statement said. “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 photo shoot. We strongly condemn the abuse of children in any form. We stand for children’s safety and well-being.”

In late November, in connection to the controversial ad that captured an image of the court documents, Balenciaga filed papers in a New York court seeking a $25 million judgment against the production company North Six and Nicholas Des Jardins, who created the set for the Garde-Robe (which was separate from the imagery featuring the teddy bears).

The use of the document in the advertisement was viewed by Balenciaga to be “malevolent or, at the very least, highly reckless.”

Conclusion

Here, we have provided detailed information on the Balenciaga Ad Scandal Controversy, the lawsuit, how Demna and celebrities reacted, and others.

With that said, here I am wrapping up this article. If you have any questions, feel free to shoot them in the comment section below. Our team will try to respond ASAP.