Whoever doesn’t believe in the power of PR has never worked in media. We’ve all signed off for the holiday week thinking it was going to be a safe time to relax and mentally brace ourselves for the barrage of Art Basel stories next week. But no. Raf shutters his namesake label, Alessandro Michele exits Gucci after an extremely lucrative tenure, and Nicolas Ghesquière has reopened old wounds with Balenciaga’s parent company, Kering (wounds that got him sued the first time lest we forget). It all feels very tumultuous to speculate- will Miuccia retire and leave Raf at Prada’s helm? Haider at Gucci? Tom Ford BACK at Gucci after his brand’s $2.3 billion acquisition? And WHO is going to take over Louis Vuitton. The short answer is I don’t know because I’m not in those rooms, but I would likely hope that Miuccia stays on, I think Haider would be beautiful at Givenchy not Gucci, and for the time being Ricardo isn’t going anywhere for the time being due to good old fashion non-competes.
Books I’ve recently read and enjoyed: Living Pictures, Polina Barskova (2022); Death in Midsummer and Other Stories, Yukio Mishima, (trans.) Donald Keene & Ivan Morris (2015); Melancholy of Resistance, László Krasznahorkai, (trans.) George Szirtes (2002).
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Outrage marketing or in poor taste? Balenciaga’s Object’s campaign unpacked.
Balenciaga is once again in hot water and after quite a wild week in fashion news stating that the brand’s design team will undergo a restructuring/revamp in 2023, it makes sense to ask, has Demna gone too far this time? Demna’s Balenciaga is no stranger to upsetting the rules of high-fashion but the brand’s latest ‘Objects’ campaign has sparked some controversy and even some darker conspiracy theories. Is this a form of outrage marketing that has gone too far, a sinister mistake that fell through the cracks, or intentional distraction from the team’s otherwise complete silence on Demna’s intricate professional and personal relationship with Kanye following his series of dangerous, and antisemetic comments as well as his inappropriate professional behavior at Adidas finally coming to light.
Last week, the brand launched a campaign for their new Objects line which promoted studded dog bowls, slate gray doormats, Stella inspired pint glasses, and most controversially, the bondage/London-punk themed teddy bear purses that went down the runway last season. Now Balenciaga has always existed within the design realm of the post-apocalyptic future sporting leather coats dragging through the melting earth’s mud and models gripping trash bags fighting headlong against a blizzard. The teddy bears themselves are actually not the problem, it’s the specific Holiday campaign in which they appeared. The images, which have now since been removed from all platforms promoted the Objects line which prominently featured children dressed in punk clothing holding the teddy bear bags. Whether this was an inappropriate decision made on purpose to toe the line of scandal in the name of fashion or not, viewers took to Instagram to express their disgust with the use of children amongst bondage and studs.
Balenciaga almost immediately pulled the images from all platforms issuing a public apology on Instagram as shown above. However, these inappropriately styled images sparked an investigation that painted a much larger, much more sinister image of the brand on par to pizza-gate or Wayfair-gate. Youtube user @shoe0nhead took to her channel to connect the Holiday campaign’s use of child models to their previous Spring Summer 23 campaign launching the Balenciaga x Adidas collection. Though the campaigns, as stated by the brand, are wholly unrelated, the “documents” spread across the desks in the corporate office-themed shoot are nothing less than incredibly strange.
Upon closer inspection, the Youtuber points out that the documents on the table appear to be a commentary on the Supreme Court Case, United States v. Williams which upheld the PROTECT Act which federally criminalized the possession and distribution of child pornography.
The Youtuber, however, strains to make concrete connections and prove malicious intent or find true evidence of a larger conspiracy. She mostly points to Balenciaga’s famous lack of social media as proof of their guilt, though anyone familiar with the brand knows that they continually wipe their social media to announce each new campaign. Balenciaga immediately released a subsequent apology stating that they will take full legal action against the person on the set who allegedly staged these unauthorized documents. The photographer of both campaigns has acknowledged the inappropriate use of the teddy bears but has denied any responsibility in staging the court documents in the separate Spring Summer 23 campaign. Despite the all too precise correlation, it is plausible that these campaigns are unrelated and likely not indicative of a larger Kering-run ring of child pornography similar to the TikTok-led Wayfair child-trafficking scandal.
Examining the situation within a fashion lens, at best, the Teddy Bears were most likely used to toe the line of subversive marketing and at worst, used as a distraction from Balenciaga’s recent silence on Kanye. Following Kanye’s series of antisemetic remarks, Kering (Balenciaga’s parent company) announced that it had severed all ties with the musician; however, it does not go unnoticed that this statement came from Kering rather than Balenciaga proper, while the apologies for the Holiday and SS23 Campaigns came swiftly and directly from the brand itself.
Demna, who fled Georgia at the age of 12 as a result of Russia’s invasion, has remained noticeably silent in regards to his creative partner and close friend’s recent behavior. It begs the question to ask that if Demna is willing to speak up against alleged child abuse, against Russia’s recent invasion of Ukraine, and is an active advocate for the queer community placing the pride flag in his 2018 collection, is antisemitism not the straw that breaks the camel’s back for him?
It will be interesting to observe the redirection that Balenciaga needs to take after several large and publicly controversial fumbles and what this means for the future of Demna at the helm of the brand.
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