Balenciaga is finally coming back to the limelight after its gifting holiday campaign back in 2022 that featured children carrying a ‘plush bear bag’ as part of its collection. A plush bear is related to child pornography which is a sensitive matter in families and society at large, this controversial holiday campaign caused so many of Balenciaga’s fans from celebrities to influencers enranged to tear off their Balenciaga fashion pieces.
This caused the brand to keep a low profile in general, although the brand’s merchandise where still being updated for sale on the brand’s website while this controversy was going on.
In February this year, Balenciaga announced that it was partnering with the National Children’s Alliance as a way to pacify critics. This method of making a comeback after a controversial shutdown seems to be very common in brands, for example, Adidas and Kanye West’s antisemitic remarks also caused Adidas to give part of the profit from the sale of Yeezy’s merchandise to a charity organization all intended to make a good comeback into the market.
Back to Balenciaga, the brand had since then launched new luxury 3XL sneakers that were silenced in the West but were nicknamed “sneakers of the year” in China which brought the brand’s Tiktok account alive again. It then went ahead with releasing its SS’23 collection on social media disabling the comment section. After which, announced to be hosting its Fall Winter’23 show, which caused a good and bad rave amongst its fans.
While in the process of making a comeback, Demna – Balenciaga’s creative director, had since then hosted a table at the Met Gala 2023, while stars like Michelle Yeoh and Salma Hayek took to red carpets in Cannes wearing Balenciaga.
Balenciaga is not the only brand who had used its fashion creativity to send a message to the public, Schiaparelli recently exploded the internet by having celebrities and models wear an imitation of animal heads, stirring up criticism from animal lovers who viewed the wearable sculptures as glorification of killing animals.
In conclusion, when thought of, these brands are not standing for the ‘evil acts’ but rather against them but then, they seem very pretentious wearing the message.
