Balenciaga's creative director, Demna Gvasalia, last week shared social media posts defending the luxury fashion brand, following the backlash over a photoshoot featuring children.
Over the past several days, Balenciaga has been criticized for images shown on its website that included toddlers holding the company's teddy bear handbags. The stuffed toys appeared to be dressed in bondage gear, such as fishnet shirts and studded leather harnesses and collars.
Following days of criticism, Balenciaga brand ambassador Kim Kardashian said in a statement shared Sunday on Twitter that she was "disgusted" and "shaken" by the controversial images. Other public figures have criticized the photos.
Days earlier, Gvasalia—who is commonly referred to by just his first name—took to his Instagram account to share a statement from Balenciaga, which read: "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."
Further criticism was piled on Balenciaga, over a shoot for its new joint campaign with Adidas, shot by Chris Maggio. Social media users noticed a pile of papers that included a page from the 2008 Supreme Court ruling United States v. Williams.
The ruling upheld the PROTECT Act, a 2003 federal law that criminalizes advertising, promoting, presenting or distributing child pornography. Its acronym stands for Prosecutorial Remedies and Other Tools to End the Exploitation of Children Today.
Gvasalia, 41, also shared a statement on this matter in an Instagram post that read: "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 photoshoot. We strongly condemn abuse of children in any form. We stand for [children's] safety and well-being."
Who Is Demna Gvasalia?
Born in Georgia at a time of civil war in what was then known as the Soviet Union, Gvasalia was raised in an Orthodox Christian Georgian-Russian household.
"When I was 12, during the war, while trying to survive in the Caucasus Mountains, I saw corpses of people who had been killed, images I wish no one to ever see, let alone as a child," Gvasalia recalled in a 2021 Vanity Fair interview.
"When you've seen that at an early age, money, fame, and the whole fashion thing can't really matter too much. Back then I actually had something to lose: my life."
In the same interview, Gvasalia revealed that his grandmother sparked his initial desire to become a fashion designer. "She dressed in such a personal way when I was a kid and is probably still the most eccentric person I know," he said.
When the war started in 1993, Gvasalia and his family fled from their home in Sukhumi to move to Tbilisi, where he studied international economics at Tbilisi State University. The family eventually settled in Düsseldorf, Germany, when Gvasalia was 21.
Gvasalia graduated from Antwerp, Belgium's Royal Academy of Fine Arts in 2006 with a master's degree in fashion design, before landing stints with the teams at fashion houses Maison Margiela and Louis Vuitton.
By 2014, Gvasalia and his brother launched the widely lauded fashion brand Vetements, which directly led to Balenciaga's parent company, Kering, appointing him as Nicolas Ghesquière's successor in the coveted top job.
"I always felt like a stranger," he told Vanity Fair of his life. "Everywhere I've lived since I was 12, I am an outsider. I was a refugee in my own country before I moved to Germany and Belgium, where I was very aware of being foreign. No one knew where Georgia was. I come from a country people can't even place on a map.
"Then came living in Paris, which can be so xenophobic, and it escalated into a full-on identity crisis. I didn't know where I belonged; it kept me in a black hole of depression and anger."
The designer added that while he misses home, his uncle has "threatened to kill me if I set foot on Georgian soil. He's a homophobe, and I'm an embarrassment for his family name. I've spent years working on being okay with who I am, and I don't want to deal with the trauma resurfacing if I go back."
This year included in Time's 100 most influential people in the world list, Gvasalia has seen Balenciaga's revenue cross the billion-euro mark under his leadership. He also worked with Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, on an Adidas collaboration. Ye was recently dropped by both brands, and several others, over his antisemitic comments.
Gvasalia famously attended last year's Met Gala alongside Ye's ex-wife, Kim Kardashian, with both stepping out onto the red carpet sporting full face masks.
While his fashion designing prowess places him in the company of countless glamorous figures, Gvasalia has lived in the Swiss countryside with his husband, French musician Loïck Gomez, since 2017.
"We drive through the forest with the bass blasting," Gvasalia told Vanity Fair of the life he leads after quitting alcohol. "That's our way of going to a club now."
After Balenciaga came under fire for its Balenciaga Objects collection ad campaign, titled "Balenciaga Gift Shop," Gabriele Galimberti, who shot the campaign, told Newsweek he wasn't responsible for the content of the images in the shoot.
"I am not in a position to comment [on] Balenciaga's choices, but I must stress that I was not entitled in whatsoever manner to neither chose the products, nor the models, nor the combination of the same," he said.
He continued: "As a photographer, I was only and solely requested to lit the given scene and take the shots according to my signature style. As usual, the direction of the campaign and of the shooting are not [in] the hands of the photographer."
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
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