Editor’s Note:
Over the years, I debated deleting this post, but decided to revise it instead.
When I originally wrote it, the internet was awash in moral-outrage-fueled critiques, and I wove that tone into the piece without clearly separating my own voice from the broader discourse.
Looking back, I still stand by the core argument, but recognize in light of recent events that parts of the piece may have implied malicious intent where I meant to critique oversight, poor judgment and a lack of transparency.
I’ve updated the article to better reflect that distinction, but wanted to clarify for anyone who read the original.
Balenciaga has built its reputation on absurd, boundary-pushing creative work for decades.
But in late 2022, the brand found itself facing a different kind of controversy, all centred around a holiday gift campaign.
And as internet users began dissecting the campaign imagery to piece together “proof” of hidden messages and a larger conspiracy theory at play, observers discovered this may have been one kind of controversy Balenciaga was not equipped to handle.
A LITTLE BIT OF BACKGROUND
For Balenciaga, controversy has always been an exploitable feature, not a bug.
Founded in Spain and later transformed into one of luxury fashion’s most recognizable brands, they built their notoriety by pushing the boundaries of Avant-garde fashion to its conceptual limits.
From atrocious green high-heeled crocs to a $3000 tote that looks like a bag of blankets, the brand is known for being fun, quirky and more than a little eccentric.
Often straying into intentionally edgy territory other companies won’t touch, which has netted them a lot of dedicated fans over the years.
Shock factor is a part of their ethos.
And part of that boundary-pushing eccentricity often involves challenging social norms or exploring dark, sexual, or thought-provoking imagery.
Something Balenciaga usually does quite well.
But something about their new ‘Gift Collection’ campaign wasn’t sitting right with long-time fans this time around.
Which is why the Gift Collection controversy felt so different.
Balenciaga has weathered accusations of being “too edgy” before. But this time, when the company tried to explain what happened, the execution was strangely unconvincing.
Maybe even too corporate.
THE GIFT COLLECTION CAMPAIGN
Balenciaga released its holiday ad campaign in November of this year and was almost immediately met with widespread backlash from parents, long-time fans, marketers and journalists who questioned the brand’s decision-making process and the overall execution of the rollout.
The shoot featured young children holding teddy bear bags surrounded by BDSM-style bondage accessories, alcohol glasses and children’s toys.
The concept took inspiration from award-winning National Geographic photographer Gabriele Galimberti’s “Toy Stories” collection, which featured children from all over the world standing in rooms with their toys.
Simple, visually-engaging and effective.
Which just makes the final result all the more puzzling.
According to Galimberti, Balenciaga invited him to photograph for them in the same style as his original collection, but wanted to provide different props for the set to give it a ‘punk’ feel.
On paper, this makes a lot of sense.
Many fashion campaigns intentionally create tension by juxtaposing innocence and rebellion, luxury and absurdity, or seriousness and humour.
Viewed in isolation, it’s a logical next step in the creative direction process.
The problem was that specific choices made during execution, when viewed as a whole, created a narrative many viewers interpreted very differently from what Balenciaga likely intended.
And perception, is sometimes everything.
Internet Sleuthing Creates an Unstoppable Narrative
While criticism of the Gift Collection was intensifying, public scrutiny had shifted to a photo from a separate ad featuring a Balenciaga x Adidas hourglass purse promoting its Spring 2023 Garde-Robe collection.
Upon closer inspection, internet sleuths had zeroed in on two bizarre set details. Which rapidly become focal points of the discussion.
A document in one of the shots included a copy of a Supreme Court case, United States v. Williams, ruling that pornographic images featuring children do not count as freedom of speech.
While a book used for set dressing happened to be Michaël Borreman’s Fire from the Sun, which features gory depictions of young, naked children playing with decapitated hands and viscera.
Which is best compared to something like Goya’s Saturn Devours His Son in tone and style.
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Neither discovery proved intent, mind you. However, both details emerged at a moment when public trust in the brand was raw and unusually fragile. More importantly, they weren’t being discussed in isolation.
Under normal circumstances, an obscure court document or art book used as background set dressing might not have attracted any attention. But audiences were now examining every image Balenciaga released with unusual scrutiny.
And now, the controversy didn’t revolve around a single image or campaign. It spanned multiple creative decisions spread across separate collections.
Viewed individually, each detail could be explained away as an unfortunate oversight. Viewed together, many consumers found ‘production error’ explanations increasingly difficult to accept.
Especially when considering the extensive sourcing and cataloguing processes prop houses use to archive materials for client use.
And Balenciaga’s extensive experience producing conceptually intricate and detailed fashion photography on a regular basis.
The result was a perfect information vacuum
BALENCIAGA RESPONDS
By November 24th, Balenciaga issued two statements via Instagram, apologizing first for featuring children in the Gift Collection.
“We sincerely apologize for any offense our holiday campaign may have caused. Our plush bear bags should not have been featured with children in this campaign. We have immediately removed the campaign from all platforms.”
And then stated they would be taking legal action against the company that provided props for the Spring 2023 Garde-Robe campaign.
“We apologize for displaying unsettling documents in our 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 photo shoot. We strongly condemn abuse of children in any form. We stand for children’s safety and well-being.”
The backlash, however, continued to grow.
Balenciaga has since wiped its Instagram clean and issued further apologies, but I feel a fundamental part of the conversation is missing.
Part of the problem was that Balenciaga’s explanation attempted to separate the controversy into two unrelated incidents: one involving creative decisions, the other involving production mistakes.
But many consumers weren’t viewing the campaigns separately.
They were viewing them together.
And when multiple controversies emerge simultaneously, audiences tend to evaluate explanations collectively rather than individually. Even if that expectation isn’t really fair.
IT'S NOT ABOUT THE TEDDY BEARS
One of the stranger aspects of the controversy is how quickly public scrutiny moved away from the teddy bears and onto other, unrelated photo shoots.
Likely because the bears were never really the issue. But it wouldn’t be incorrect to say they are symptomatic of the larger problem.
Fashion has a long history of borrowing from subcultures many consumers initially find uncomfortable. Punk, fetishwear, and bondage-inspired aesthetics have all appeared in luxury collections in one form or another, often stripped of their original context and reinterpreted as high fashion.
Alternative fashion, especially, has been incorporating bondage-inspired aesthetics for decades.
Dolls Kill, for example, has been successfully marketing BDSM teddy bears sans children for a while. And bondage-themed teddy bears are actually pretty popular.
Fashion campaigns also regularly juxtapose innocence and rebellion, luxury and absurdity, or childhood nostalgia and adult identity.
In isolation, none of those creative tools are especially controversial.
The problem was execution.
The controversy arose from how those aesthetics were applied to children, and part of that probably stemmed from the fact that Balenciaga was not advertising BDSM-themed bears.
Galimberti stated in an interview that Balenciaga’s production team had to dress the bears up in leather chokers, lacey thongs and other accessories for the shoot.
This suggests the BDSM theme was added at the last minute to create a sense of contrast to market the items in the Gift Collection. Not as an intentional choice with a lot of thought put behind it.
So, they were courting a kind of controversy with some level of awareness. But clearly underestimated the public response when it comes to children.
Which is why it was never really about the bears at all.
Many successful ad campaigns have proven you can use children in ads that have adult themes without creating uncomfortable narratives.
Condom commercials and this excellent ad from Liquid Death all feature children in scenarios that allude to adult activities.
But anything to do with children is a sensitive topic in the marketing world. So there is always an emphasis on it being a joke that makes the gag enjoyable.
From previous Balenciaga campaigns, it’s pretty apparent the brand knows how to have fun, too.
Yet they chose to portray unsmiling children alone in a room surrounded by clear allusions to bondage and alcohol consumption without any of the fun the brand is known for.
No humour. No obvious satire.
It was such a wildly off-brand, borderline bland take that the concept created a vacuum for speculation to run amok.
Which is unfortunate when the concept might have worked better in a slightly different form.
The Accountability Problem
Perhaps the most damaging aspect of the controversy wasn’t the imagery itself.
It was the explanation that followed.
Balenciaga initially suggested that third-party vendors and production partners bore responsibility for some of the materials that appeared in the campaigns.
On paper, that explanation is plausible.
Large-scale advertising campaigns involve photographers, stylists, production companies, prop houses, legal teams, creative directors, brand managers, and countless other contributors.
But that complexity cuts both ways.
The more people involved in a production, the harder it becomes for audiences to believe that controversial elements simply appeared without anyone noticing.
Luxury fashion campaigns are among the most heavily curated forms of advertising in the world.
Every prop, image, styling decision, and final photograph typically passes through multiple rounds of review before publication.
Which is why many observers found themselves asking a simple question:
How did all of this make it through approval?
That question remains far more important than any individual prop, court document, or background detail.
Because it speaks directly to the systems responsible for producing the work in the first place.
When you’re forced to drop a $25 million lawsuit almost as quickly as it’s brought up, vague references to ‘third parties’ don’t cut it for casual bystanders.
Because, to some extent, these smaller, legal details suggest there may be agreements or contracts behind the scenes that make fashion houses far more responsible for vetting their props than Balenciaga’s official statement suggests.
And that ambiguity between fashion houses as ‘the machine’ and as the production team can be very costly in moments like these.
FINAL THOUGHTS
It isn’t necessary to believe there was a hidden agenda to understand why the Gift Collection controversy gained so much traction.
A breakdown in judgment at a company of this size is already a significant story.
But a growing disconnect between what audiences were seeing and what the company claimed happened behind the scenes can quickly transform a book, a photo and a couple of pieces of paper into an entire narrative.
The prop house may deserve some blame for cataloging items without examining them closely. And Balenciaga has survived controversy before.
But this specific incident remains a compelling case study on how public speculation rushes to fill in the gaps when official explanations just don’t cut it.
The internet did what the internet always does: it searched for patterns, connected dots, and constructed narratives.
Some of those narratives were reasonable. Others were not.
But they all emerged from the same place—a lack of trust.
Because for once, audiences weren’t questioning whether the brand was being provocative. They were questioning whether the brand was being honest.
And honesty often requires a different standard altogether.
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