'It is so clear to me now that it was the wrong thing to do.” In an exclusive interview, Demna shares his side of the story following the controversy surrounding Balenciaga's recent campaigns, the reactions on social media, and his future with the brand.
Within days of its publication, the social mediato the Gift Shop campaign rapidly went from a trickle to a storm: Critics condemned the house for showing children holding bags designed to look like destroyed teddy bears, with studs and harnesses, amid an array of grown-up items before them—a Balenciaga-branded wine glass, for example. Many felt the bags referenced BDSM, and that their presence on the shoot was an abhorrent sexualization of children.
Yesterday, Balenciaga and the Kering Foundation announced that it would partner with National Children’s Alliance on its recently launched Mental Health Institute for the next three years. The aims, Balenciaga said, are helping children heal from trauma, and for NCA to work with the house on educating itself about child protection.asked Demna about all of this during a series of lengthy conversations that took place in Paris earlier this year. What follows has been condensed and edited.
The Gift Shop campaign was released online, and for a week or so, nothing, and then there was a reaction on social media—a very negative reaction, a very critical, very angry reaction, specifically to the images of children carrying the bags. What did you think of the reaction? I was shocked when I heard about their presence on the set of the Spring 2023 campaign. It was a set of negligent and unfortunate but not intentional coincidences. At first, we were told the documents were confirmed to be fake. The Gift Shop campaign was different because the inappropriate nature of associating kids with those objects was clearly our mistake. When the scandal was sparked [by the documents and props], I was like, everybody, my team, was shocked.
It’s the only explanation that is plausible to me. That’s the only way I can explain it. Obviously, if you look for the dots, you can connect anything, but I don’t have any other explanation for it.There will be those who agree with you that it was coincidental, and there will be those who don’t. What do you say to those people who believe it was intentional?
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