Balenciaga, the luxury fashion label, has apologized after its promotional campaign featuring child models and BDSM-styled teddy bears sparked outrage online. The company has threatened to sue unidentified responsible parties.
The promotional materials were created for Balenciaga’s spring/summer collection, which included teddy bear handbags, and were released earlier this month. It showed pre-teen girls hugging or standing next to plush toys that appeared to be dressed in BDSM attire.
The statement, which was posted on the company’s Instagram Stories on Tuesday, stated that the controversial ads had been removed from all platforms.
“Our plush bear bags should not have been featured in this campaign with children,” it stated. “We removed the campaign from all platforms immediately.”
According to a tweet that went viral this week, Balenciaga used a legal document referring to “virtual child porn” as a prop. The image, however, was taken from a different photoshoot done in collaboration with Adidas in November.
Some observers noted that it alluded to the 2002 Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition case. The US Supreme Court overturned portions of federal legislation prohibiting child porn, which plaintiffs claimed violated the First Amendment. The ruling agreed that the government could not prohibit images that were not obscene and whose production did not involve child abuse.
Some media outlets identified the page as coming from the 2008 United States v. Williams Supreme Court decision. This decision upheld another federal law prohibiting child porn, which had been challenged on the basis of free speech.
The company admitted that the documents in its promotional materials were “unsettling,” and it promised legal action “against the parties responsible.”
On his Monday show, Fox News host Tucker Carlson brought up the controversy. He chastised the clothing company for “endorsing kiddy porn” with the ad campaign. He challenged anyone to provide a more plausible explanation for what the images were meant to convey, and he chastised Instagram for allowing such images to be posted on its platform.
Some claimed that Balenciaga had deleted its Instagram feed in the midst of the controversy, but Newsweek refuted this. The company did purge its page in early October in support of Iranian protesters, as well as for other political causes and to commemorate the retirement of fashion icon Jean Paul Gaultier.
