Balenciaga's 'Unprecedented' Lawsuit Points to P.R. Nightmare
Vocal consumers are working overtime to hold the brand to account, perhaps because the fashion establishment has a poor history of doing just that.
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The fallout from Balenciaga’s campaign featuring children has been nothing short of a public relations nightmare for a fashion house that had been previously regarded as one of the world’s buzziest luxury brands, one that had long prospered on provocation.
Under creative director Demna, Balenciaga had long been known for its uncanny ability to use irony to turn otherwise goofy ideas into products that could plausibly bear three- or four-figure price tags and become part of the zeitgeist. Such was the case with its Simpsons episode and $995 Simpsons sweatshirts, its $1,750 trashbag purse, and $1050 Crocs. Its recently released women’s campaign featured Nicole Kidman and Bella Hadid modeling edgy-luxe clothes and bags in a sterile yet severe corporate office environment. In fact, the brand has long thrived on severity, as evidenced by its models’ signature runway walk, jarringly quick and purposeful, which has been a long-running TikTok meme.
After the brand released ad images that featured small children holding teddy bears that Balenciaga has described as “plush bear bags” but others have called “BDSM teddy bears” or “teddy bears dressed in bondage,” outrage spread across social media with the ferocity of a wildfire on a hot, dry day. People were upset that the images also included an array of empty alcohol glasses and that a child was posed on a bed. Then internet sleuths uncovered that a separate spring 2023 campaign image from the office shoot featured a printout of court documents from the United States v. Williams decision, which upheld the PROTECT Act criminalizing child pornography.
Balenciaga quickly took down the ads and apologized, posting a statement on social media that read, “We strongly condemn abuse of children in any form. We stand for children safety and well-being.” This all seems pretty textbook. Yet Balenciaga also took the less expected step of filing a $25 million lawsuit against production company North Six, Inc. and set designer Nicholas Des Jardins and his company specifically for including those court papers in the photo, which may be more of a public relations move than anything given Balenciaga’s desperation to absolve itself of responsibility for the photo shoot.
Campaign photographer Gabriele Galimberti wrote in a statement posted to Instagram that he had nothing to do with casting or prop selection. Meanwhile, Des Jardins’s agent Gabriela Moussaieff, has said Balenciaga is using her client “as a scapegoat,” adding, “Everyone from Balenciaga was on the shoot and was present on every shot and worked on the edit of every image in post production,” and noting that the court docs came, along with everything else, “from a prop house” that rented out items for photo shoots.
Professor Susan Scafidi, director of Fordham’s Fashion Law institute, told me in an email Monday morning that Balenciaga’s lawsuit is “highly unusual if not unprecedented.”
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