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Here’s Balenciaga’s 2023 video showing off their styles for the year. This is from their own YouTube channel. Fair warning: the children shown appear to be do

• orliesaurus 4y ago
  I am so glad this wasn't a rickroll video
• rvz 4y ago
  > Balenciaga is trying to claim they didn’t know anything about this. That seems absurd given the rest of what they are putting out and who is working with them. There you go. The sort of person to give final approval over this at Balenciaga thought they could test and get away with this incredibly disgusting shoot. Then everyone noticed and they started to back-peddle. Unfortunately, I don't think it is the last time we will see Balenciaga and others do disturbing shoots like that. Quite a shame that they have just shown how disgusting they are.
• ren_engineer 4y ago
  in a post Epstein world none of these companies deserve benefit of the doubt in these types of situations. Once people dug into it they found Balenciaga has been doing similar things for years, you have to wonder why their marketing team would think this stuff appeals to their extremely rich and powerful customers
  • p0pcult 4y ago
    In a society with rule of law, everyone deserves benefit of the doubt, always, until proven otherwise.
    • ren_engineer 4y ago
      Balenciaga isn't facing any criminal charges, I'm talking about public opinion. If somebody shows you who they are, believe them.
      • p0pcult 4y ago
        So, Balenciaga is checks notes an attention whore drumming up attention? Gosh, it's almost like you're describing the entirety of high fashion.
    • mantas 4y ago
      Do we have rule of law though? E.g. certain Russian oligarchs winning lawsuits in West because of some legalese. It feels like „rule of law“ nowadays is used to silence the weak and doesn't apply to the powerful ones.
      • p0pcult 4y ago
        Because you allege that the rule of law is implemented imperfectly, does not invalidate the entire project of the rule of law.
        • mantas 4y ago
          A great tool can cause great damage when missused. The main question is what's the tangent. And TBH it looks quite sad in the past decade.
          • p0pcult 4y ago
            ...which is an indictment of the misuse, not the tool. Or do we get rid of everything that "can cause great damage"?
• KrugerDunnings 4y ago
  I thought that fashion show was great, the empty pit of mud is just hysterical, it is a bit of a shock act. The hole thing just seems like an inside joke that some people took too serious. This is a common problem with communicating things ironically, someone is bound to not get it. Dunno what happened with the photo shoot but probably the director was like put some paper on the table, and someone was like what papers, supreme court document, find some on the internet, I found a ruling about free speech and child porn, Ok great. You may say this is a stupid thing but then the highest court in the country decided to spend its time on the important legal distinction between child porn and free speech. Like that are very serious grown people spending their time on that. Fashion is stupid but at least is obvious to everyone and everyone but the biggest autist know everyone knows. Also I don't see the difference between the work by Lotta Volkova and some drawings by Goya.
  • incrudible 4y ago
    • hairofadog 4y ago
      How many incidents of “preschool leather daddy” have there been?
      • incrudible 4y ago
        At least one, but it's not something I'm willing to google to find out precisely how common it is.
        • hairofadog 4y ago
          My first guess would be zero, but even if it is in fact one, the answer to your question regarding how many times it would take to make me believe this fashion show is part of a child-porn conspiracy is "more than that". Drag queens have more to do with clowns than with sex. I can't see anything wrong with drag queen story hour.
        • 4y ago
• syrrim 4y ago
  They filed a lawsuit claiming they didn't know about a single stray sheet of paper in one of the photos of the shoot, which looks entirely innocent on first inspection, but happens to be a court document for a famous child pornography suit. The existence of this document has been claimed by some observers (shoe, for one), to be the "smoking gun" proving that this is all satan worship rather than strange art. So it is perfectly reasonable for balenciaga to assert that they didn't know about this document, and a great deal hinges on this seemingly minor question.
  • p0pcult 4y ago
    Nothing hinges on this question; nothing illegal was done. You're being trolled by both Balenciaga and the Twittersphere.
    • paganel 4y ago
      That photo [1] with said document looks real enough, what's there to "troll"? Not sure about the satanic thing, as I'm an atheist myself, but to put that sort of document inside a photo-op that already looks fishy as hell is not ok, to put it mildly. [1] https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2022/11/28/20/65014791-11478639-This_is_the_July_ad_campaign_which_featured_the_printout_of_the_-m-17_1669667256989.jpg https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2022/11/28/20/65014791-11478639...
  • no-dr-onboard 4y ago
    > So it is perfectly reasonable for balenciaga to assert that they didn't know about this document High fashion photoshoots are a multi layered production. Several people would have viewed these photos, edited, adjusted, filtered out bad shots, etc prior to this campaign being released. The fact that no one seemed to bat an eye at a judicial opinion including the words "child sexualization" seems concerning. No special knowledge is required.
    • chc 4y ago
      Even after somebody told me it was there, I still had to look really damn hard to find it. I don't think your expectation that people reviewing the shoot noticed it is reasonable.
• WastingMyTime89 4y ago
  > These seem to be adults dressed as literal demons (one of them has horns on their head) many of whom are carrying (probably fake) children, and all marching through the mud. It’s very unsettling. No offense but that’s just a fashion show in a setting involving some mud in the background. It looks a bit like another planet rather than hell. Also there are no children here. I’m still looking for the disturbing part. > This next thing is considerably worse since it appears to involve pictures of actual children (I won’t link it here since it’s NSFL). The controversy is about pictures of kids carrying bags shaped as teddy bears in chains which can make one thinks of bdsm. I repeat: the teddy bears are in chains, not the kids. It’s in bad taste but very much SFL. I have no clue about what’s actually happening at Balenciaga but I wish people kept to facts.
  • cjbgkagh 4y ago
    I give a wide berth to artists but those teddy bears are not innocuous. They are highly suggestive and in the context of the photo shoot are beyond the pale. In my opinion BDSM teddy bears alone is a bright red flag.
    • navjack27 4y ago
      So because you give a wide berth to artists and I assume high art in general... I'm sorry but your opinion is invalidated. It's invalidated in the same way if some rube off the street told you that they give a wide berth to applied research and then went on to give some sort of opinion about workplace solutions and then summed it all up by saying some one particular thing was a red flag to them.
      • cjbgkagh 4y ago
        Rubes are entitled to their opinions as am I. The wide berth is to give more latitude in restricting behavior than those who are not artists. It’s a privilege to allow them more freedom to create art. If they use that privilege to create BDSM teddy bears then I think social outrage is a predictable and appropriate response.
• deleted 4y ago
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• jasonwatkinspdx 4y ago
  I mean the fashion show is just the typical haute couture nonsense. But I did look up the instagram profile you're talking about and saw one of the images in google's cache. I'll save other people the trouble of doing the same: it's a little kid taped into a chair with packing tape, including over their mouth, and they're wearing headphones connected to a laptop showing some sort of tv show. It's not CSAM but it certainly is intended to ape it stylistically, which I find incredibly poor taste.
  • MuffinFlavored 4y ago
    > which I find incredibly poor taste. I wonder if that's the point. Fashion is all about pushing boundaries/generating buzz/publicity, right? I'm not saying I agree with it. I just don't think anybody would be talking about Balenciaga on HackerNews if they weren't being quite literally as edgy as possible/pushing the boundaries as hard as possible. If all of this ends up increasing sales/brand image in one twisted way or another, will they call it a net win and go back to being a sleeping giant until they fabricate/drum up the next "scandal"?
    • influx 4y ago
      Pushing images of simulated child abuse to sell shoes should be beyond the limits of what society accepts. Art can continue to push boundaries without kids. It’s sick this even needs to be said.
    • mc32 4y ago
      Do you think they'll go for the same but instead use stereotypical imagery of starving children or POWs? I bet they do not because yes, it'll create lots of "controversy" but also many advocacy organizations will come down on them like a ton of bricks.
      • p0pcult 4y ago
        Of course you're right, but let's continue the thought experiment: if they had used some of the imagery you suggest, would anyone claim that the people taking the photos were starving said children, or imprisoning people?
• woodruffw 4y ago
  I watched this video and I think you've grossly overstated how disturbing it is. The "theme" (insofar as anything high fashion really has a theme) seems like a mixture of grindhouse and apocalypse. "Child carrying a doll" is a borderline trope in that context: compare, for example, the first episode of The Walking Dead. I don't know anything about the thing you haven't linked, because you haven't linked it. But the panic over this video doesn't pass the sniff test.
  • stickfigure 4y ago
    My takeaway is simply "this makes people want to buy clothes??" Overall the result is comedy.
    • woodruffw 4y ago
      Exactly. It's honestly a funny video, insofar as it demonstrates how ridiculously divorced concept fashion is from everyday clothing.
  • giardini 4y ago
    woodruffw says "> I watched this video and I think you've grossly overstated how disturbing it is. <" Yes. It is annoying to have my attention brought to this. What would be disturbing would be being forced to watch the entire video, as in "A Clockwork Orange": https://www.slantmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/02/film_clockworkorange-1024x576.jpg https://www.slantmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/02/fil...). . Luckily freedom of speech reigns so I can turn off such shite. On the plus side, they didn't pay much for the set, a mud/coal pit of some sort.
• seydor 4y ago
  Nice try, balenciaga marketing dept.
• renewiltord 4y ago
  I watched the very first 30 seconds and saw literally zero things to worry about. If there's anything there, kindly link to a specific timestamp. Dear God, I wish we were still in pandemic mode so that pearl clutchers could scream about masks instead. Not people wearing horns, dear god. I think we might be summoning the devil.
• mrtksn 4y ago
  Sure, disturbing photos and all but what's the problem? This all seems to me like another "save the children" craze, a pretext to oppress speech and snoop into peoples private business. Artists use provocative or disturbing images all the time, its how some art works. Images of children have always been used in various contexts. If anything, I will be very disturbed if using imagery of children becomes a new taboo. I hear that in the USA you can't interact casually with other peoples children because they assume that you are some kind of pervert, are we extending this taboo to imagery of kids just because the the elite pedophile cabal runs the government conspiracy theory has become mainstream? I find all this ridiculous. If there's an abuse or something, jail them already but this has turned into a witch hunt. The western society is just inches away from becoming like Taliban and hunting down people for objectionable art. There's also a chance this is happening simply because Balenciaga dropped Kanye West but I hope it's Balenciaga's marketing people stirring a controversy.
• vorpalhex 4y ago
  None of this was upsetting. This sort of seems like the "why can't comedians only tell nice jokes?" Fashion is an art form. Sometimes it makes statements and attempts at subversion.
• RickJWagner 4y ago
  Groomers gonna groom. It's part of a campaign to ever so slowly sexualize children.