Why Are People Convinced Balenciaga Is Promoting Pedophilia?
For luxury fashion house Balenciaga, a seemingly run-of-the-mill photoshoot designed to sell a collection of holiday-themed tchotchkes has snowballed into an internet frenzy — which now includes accusations of a deep-seated pedophilia conspiracy, a Kardashian statement, and a $25 million lawsuit. So, how did we get here?
What Was in the Balenciaga Ad?
More from Rolling Stone
Organ-Devouring 'Liver King' Blasted by Bodybuilders Over Alleged Steroid Use
Giddyup, Ivermectin Fans! Twitter Revokes Rule Against Covid Lies
This Thanksgiving, Try the Pledge of Allegiance Dinner Prank
Released on Nov. 16, the Balenciaga Gift Shop was an attempt by the fashion brand to promote “an exploration of what people collect and receive as gifts,” according to a now-removed press release. The photos were shot by Gabriele Galimberti — a photojournalist known for capturing his subjects with their personal items arranged in neat rows in front of them — and included wine glasses, beer koozies, jewelry earrings, and several distressed teddy bear handbags in fishnets and leather straps.
The problem? The models holding the bears were children — an inclusion that several social media commentators immediately deemed inappropriate and a purposeful attempt by Balenciaga to promote child pornography and pedophilia. The outrage, first driven on TikTok and Twitter, grew exponentially after several TikTok sleuths accidentally confused the ad with a Balenciaga Spring 2023 advertisement starring Nicole Kidman. (Kidman did not respond to Rolling Stone’s request for comment). In one of the public photos of the campaign, there’s a page of the Supreme Court case United States v. Williams, which prohibited the pandering of child pornography. Coincidence? Internet sleuths don’t think so.
Thousands of social media users said the gift campaign was “inappropriate” and promoted child sexualization. As the controversy grew, users on TikTok began to go viral for throwing away or completely destroying their Balenciaga merchandise in protest. But a larger portion of the outrage can be attributed to a major push from far-right influencers like Candance Owens and Andrew Tate, and Kanye West, who have cited the Balenciaga blunder as evidence that the Hollywood elite is actively promoting child sexualization and pedophilia. Some users even claimed the rapper chose to leave his Balenciaga deal — completely ignoring clear documentation and reporting that the brand actually removed West for his repeated antisemitic comments.
“People think Kanye is crazy, but see he’s been in Hollywood,” a pro-Kanye podcaster said in a conspiracy video covering the Balenciaga news. “He knows all this sh*t. Everything he’s saying is real.” “Kanye KNOWS. Trump KNOWS. We KNOW,” says one of the top comments underneath the video, which has been liked 15 thousand times. “Turn off the World Cup. Burn your Balenciaga. Do not shop there anymore,” Tristan Tate, Andrew’s brother, said in a recent podcast interview with his brother Andrew, calling for more people to expose Balenciaga. “And shoutout to Kanye for cutting ties with those people because there’s more to all of this than meets the eye.”
Less than a week after the ad went live, Balenciaga pulled the teddy bear images and issued an apology, saying using children as models alongside the seemingly adult items was a mistake. “We strongly condemn child abuse, It was never our intent to include it in our narrative,” Balenciaga tells Rolling Stone in a statement. “Our plush bear bags should not have been featured with children. The two separate ad campaigns in question reflect a series of grievous errors for which Balenciaga takes responsibility.”
Galimberti tells Rolling Stone while he was the photographer on set, he had no creative control over who or what he photographed. According to Galimberti, he was approached by representatives from Balenciaga to use his famous documentary style to create a punk-themed children’s holiday campaign. He says the young models were all children of Balenciaga employees, and he was not the one who chose the bears for the children to hold. In a statement shared with Rolling Stone, Balenciaga said they were responsible for choosing the bears, adding the responsibility for the shoot “lies with Balenciaga alone.”
“I honestly thought that those bears were ugly. But that’s the only thing I can say for me,” Galimberti says. “They were ugly, but I don’t know if they’re punk or bondage.”
The Italian photographer tells Rolling Stone that in the past six days, he’s had two planned jobs canceled and had his personal phone number posted online with a message for boycotters to harass him.
“It’s clear from the reaction people are having that my photos offended people,” Galimberti says. “But the atomic bomb was triggered by the other campaign because people went to see other photos of Balenciaga, and they found that document of the Supreme Court. And they started thinking that there was a conspiracy between the two things. And most of the media immediately said it’s Galimberti.”
Who Is Balenciaga Suing?
While Balenciaga has taken responsibility for pairing the bears with child models, the company says it was not responsible for the documents and set decorations that appeared in the Spring 2023 campaign. In a statement to Rolling Stone, representatives for Balenciaga said the desk items were supposed to be fake legal papers rented from a prop house but somehow ended up being real. “The inclusion of these unapproved documents was the result of reckless negligence for which Balenciaga has filed a complaint,” representatives for Balenciaga said. “We take full accountability for our lack of oversight and control of the documents in the background and we could have done things differently.”
According to a lawsuit filed on Friday, Balenciaga is now seeking $25 million in damages from the production company North Six and set designer Nicholas Des Jardins for the office photoshoot, claiming both parties were “malevolent or, at the very least, extraordinarily reckless” in including the legal documents on set with Balenciaga’s knowledge.
But an attorney for Des Jardins tells Rolling Stone that Balenciaga isn’t completely innocent here. “There certainly was no malevolent scheme going on — as Balenciaga is aware, numerous boxes of documents simply were rented from a prop house,” the attorney says. “Moreover, representatives from Balenciaga were present at the shoot, overseeing it and handling papers and props, and Des Jardins, as a set designer, was not responsible for image selection from the shoot.”
Production company North Six declined to comment, but a source close to the group tells Rolling Stone the shoot was only logistically managed by North Six, and the company wasn’t involved with creative direction or on-site for the final photos.
Balenciaga Apologized. Are They Still Canceled?
Since its first apology on Nov. 22, Balenciaga has deleted every photo on its Instagram account except the statements apologizing for what they called mistakes. It started as a small outcry from more fringe #SaveTheChildren accounts — a seemingly legitimate anti-trafficking cry that has long been coopted by qanon conspiracy theorists. But it soon reached larger platforms, including both popular fashion accounts and controversial public figures, who have called on celebrities with Balenciaga partnerships to speak out. On Sunday night, Kim Kardashian — who has worked with the brand many times over the years, including wearing Balenciaga to the 2021 Met Gala and walking in their Paris Fashion Week show earlier this year — addressed her silence in a Twitter statement, saying she appreciated Balenciaga’s removal of the campaigns.
“I have been quiet for the past few days, not because I haven’t been disgusted and outraged by the recent Balenciaga campaigns, but because I wanted an opportunity to speak to their team to understand for myself how this could have happened,” Kardashian said.
But exactly an hour after her post, Kardashian added an additional statement, saying she was “re-evaluating” her relationship with the brand. As of Tuesday morning, almost all of the top 100 videos under the Balenciaga hashtag on TikTok referenced or condemned the ad campaigns as an attempt to sexualize children or promote pedophilia. One popular account, @annareportsnews, even made a video, claiming the campaigns purposefully include references to the Satanic icon Baal and a book from avant-garde Belgian painter Michaël Borremans.
The internet is a well-known breeding ground for conspiracy theories. But when online theories gain massive and mainstream support, internet fervor can spell real-world damage for the people involved. For example, Galimberti says he’s received thousands of messages daily calling him a pedophile or encouraging him to kill himself. Galimberti says that the popularity of internet theories has lead people to take sleuthing too far — and infer that even innocuous photos with or about children are clues about secret pedophilia messaging. While he says he’s been encouraged by representatives from Balenciaga to make his accounts private – he refuses.
“Balenciaga is now taking full responsibility. They are saying, ‘We are responsible and put the children together with these objects,’ ” he says. “It’s too early to understand if everything will disappear in memory or if this will stay with me. But I told them, ‘I’m not hiding because I’m not guilty.’ ”
Best of Rolling Stone
