The Georgian stylist Demna apologized “personally” after the dissemination of advertisements mixing children and sexually connoted accessories that have embarrassed the Haute Couture house.
Mo12345lemonde with AFP
More than two weeks after the outcry aroused by the Balenciaga advertising campaign deemed child psychiatrist, the artistic director of the fashion house, the Georgian Demna Gvasalia (now called Demna), apologized. Master in provocation and author of disturbing parades carrying societal messages, Demna has been on the hot seat from this campaign featuring children and accessories sexually connoted.
“I want to apologize personally for the bad artistic choice (…) and I assume my responsibility”, he wrote, Friday December 2, on Instagram . “If I sometimes wanted to provoke through my work, I never intended to do it with a subject as horrible as children’s abuse, which I condemn,” he continues.
On certain images, removed more than a week ago, you could see a child, standing on a sofa, or on a bed that holds a blanket as a teddy bear in the shape of a plush, strapped with belts of belts Black inspired by BDSM, or bondage, a sadomasochistic sexual practice. Muse of Balenciaga, the American star of social networks, Kim Kardashian, said that she wanted to “reassess” her relationship with the luxury brand after this campaign.
The brand withdraws its complaint
On social networks, Internet users have also noted that, in another photo, a bag resulting from a collaboration with Adidas is posed in an office setting, on documents where extracts of a decision of a decision are printed The US Supreme Court on Infantile Pornography.
While taking “full responsibility for the lack of surveillance and control”, Balenciaga declared at the start of the week having “filed a complaint” for “the inclusion of these undeveloped documents, the result of irresponsible negligence”. The managing director of the house, Cédric Charbit, finally announced that the brand “had decided not to bring legal action”, in a statement posted Friday evening on Instagram, where he also apologizes “personally”.
According to New York Post, The complaint, filed in front of New York justice, was directed against the production house North Six and the Nicholas des Jardins decorator and claimed 25 million of dollars in repair.
For Balenciaga, this controversy falls badly, because the brand had already had to cut the bridges in October with rapper Kanye West after his anti -Semitic slippages. Three weeks earlier, he opened the Balenciaga parade in Paris.