- Hi everyone, it's Justine.
Today I came to give you my researched opinion
about the Balenciaga campaign.
It was released a few days ago
and taken down almost immediately
because a public outcry started.
We'll get to that.
If you have children
don't watch this video with your children.
This topic is not put children.
You will see...
It starts with the latest runway show
that Balenciaga presented during fashion week.
It was very moody, very dark, a quite disturbing mood,
my personal opinion.
There was a lot of mud.
You would see models racing,
pacing through the mud, no smile, very glim lighting.
I must add that Balenciaga
is a very successful high fashion brand.
It has an aura which is very edgy,
underground, very trendy at the moment.
There are many celebrities attending Balenciaga shows
and there are many more people who would pay
to attend these shows.
The current creative director of Balenciaga
is a war refugee.
And so, he wanted to make a statement this season.
He sent models down the runway
who looked like refugees, fighting to survive almost.
They were literally pacing through the mud,
wearing distressed clothes.
Some of them were carrying a hand accessory,
which looked like a handbag,
in the form of distressed teddy bears.
Some of the models were wearing makeup
that made them look like they had been beaten up.
The metaphor is very clear.
You could say it's very conceptual,
very avant garde, which it is.
It's not very wearable, but it's a happening, you know.
And at that time they made headlines for it.
But that was two months ago.
And it's not what brought Balenciaga
pretty close to implosion right now.
Fast forward to last week,
Balenciaga publishes their gifting campaign,
advertising campaign ahead of the upcoming Christmas season.
This is a key period in the year for a high fashion brand,
not just Balenciaga but all of them.
Those brands that make very expensive,
not so wearable clothes,
they need the smaller objects with the lower price tag
so people can afford a little bit
of the magic, of the stardust
and actually buy from the house
because the clothes are very, very pricey.
So, that's very understandable.
And the runway show was a little bit out there,
so you see where they're coming.
They were like, okay, for the Christmas season,
we need more appealing, we need more aesthetically pleasing,
we need more commercial.
It's the marketing brain kicking in.
They hired Gabriele Galimberti,
sorry about the pronunciation.
A photographer who's famous for, among other things,
his photo series called "Toy Stories"
where he traveled the world and took photos of kids
in many different countries and cultures showing them
posing with their most priced possessions
and often it's their toys.
So they're standing there smiling, proud
and displayed their very favorite things.
It's very sweet, sociologically super interesting.
These photos are a great series, if you ask me.
He probably was asked
to do exactly the same for Balenciaga
and he said, "Sure thing.
All right."
This is one photo that came out of that photo shoot day.
You see it's clean, you see light
you see colors, it looks tidy.
So, a lot more commercial than the runway show clearly.
You also recognize the style of the photographer.
You see that little boy standing on the couch
with his subjects displayed in front of him.
The products are very visible.
It's a lot more commercial,
which very likely was the briefing.
Then you look closer and you realize that
the teddy bear that the kid is holding
is actually a bear including a lock necklace.
The items on the table are for adults only and/or sexual.
You see the candle in that beer can.
You see that bottle of H2O
which is in fact a liquor shaped bottle.
None of that should be in a child's bedroom... technically.
Look at the position of that straw
and the legs of the child.
The placement, how each item is styled on the photo
is clearly thought out.
And every detail and position matters
if you work as a brand manager.
This photo shocks me immensely and I like to explain why.
Before studying fashion design and becoming a designer
I worked in brand management for several years.
I was part of the brand team that creates
the major advertising campaigns, just like this one.
Let me tell you:
a shoot like this means lots of people involved.
The brand is "lead" in that process.
They choose the products to be displayed.
The lead agency proposes a concept.
There is back and forth, many loops.
The brand approves the concept.
Then the styling itself is
in the hands of somebody who's booked especially for that.
The photographer is chosen very carefully.
The set is planned weeks, if not months in advance.
Everything involves in that process
means at least 20 people...
before the photo shoot even takes place!
Then on the day of the shoots,
you don't just have the styling team there
and the production team and the photographer,
you also have the brand people.
You have the brand managers
and directors who are there who keep things in check
and make sure that what is being shot
is in line with the approved concept.
The agency people are there too.
A photo shoot set is crowded!
All those people are there to make sure that
the concept being executed is the concept that was approved
and that everything being done is in line with the brand.
None of these people questioned
whether it was a good idea to put a child in that scene?!
Are you kidding me??
There are more photos from that photo shoot.
There is, for instance the one that was headlining
the gift shop webpage on the Balenciaga website.
There are more photos yet that were taken.
That's very normal because on a photo shoot day,
you try different positions.
You make the models pose in different places,
different attitudes, different everything,
so that you have enough material.
You shoot way too much
and then after the photoshoot day, during post production,
you pick the final images that will make it to the campaign.
Speaking of post production,
that means even more people involved, right?
On a campaign like this, a major campaign,
there are hours and hours of editing, of Photoshopping.
The post production people will question everything
and the brand managers as well by the way.
It's not like the brand is out of that process either!
You second guess the colors, the strains of hair.
You look that the skin looks impeccable.
You would change the leaves in the trees
in the background of that photo if necessary.
You can edit anything that's off.
You can take an object and put it somewhere else.
You can edit out that straw between the legs of the child.
You can change anything.
It's Photoshop, yeah?
And during that process, nobody either questioned
whether the concept was a good idea...
So, let me be very clear.
There is an obvious problem in the hierarchy at Balenciaga
of who is making the decisions
because I don't believe for a second
that a campaign like this would be published
without the brand's approval.
There is way too much process
and way too many people involved.
It's a structural issue here.
Once the internet, freaking out,
started to ask Balenciaga to take that photo down
from the website, they replaced it by this one
where the child is not directly interacting
with that bondage bear.
Better?
Not much. Not much.
In the end, Balenciaga took down all the photos
from that photoshooting and also erased them
from their socials, everywhere,
while headlines kept piling up
because this is not even the end of the story.
At about the same time as that gifting campaign,
another campaign went live,
this time featuring adult models.
So you will see Nicole Kidman,
you will see Isabelle Huppert,
very, very famous international personalities
with a mix of countries, skin tones, ages, which is good.
It is the Spring 2023 Ready-to-wear Campaign.
It looks a lot more wearable than the runway fashion, right?
Very clean, very professional.
It's set up in the lawyer's office.
At the same time and with a very similar concept,
they also shot the Capsule Collection
Balenciaga x Adidas.
So, it's co-branded thing.
You bet that a brand like Adidas
would look at the photos from the runway show and go:
if we are gonna do a collaboration,
you take the mud out, you make them look clean,
commercial, professional, sellable
because Adidas is much more of a mass market,
non-polarizing brand.
So far, so good.
But then this flat lay photo happens.
It is a Balenciaga and Adidas co-branded handbag set up,
laid flat with different accessories on the lawyer's desk.
That's the concept.
There is one text in the foreground of that photo
which is legible.
On a professional photo shooting day like this,
I repeat, nothing is left to chance
especially for a flat play photo like this.
You would give a lot of thought
to which items are gonna be in the frame,
the orientation of everything.
What is gonna be cropped out
on the side and in the corners
to make the scene look like
it's a real desk and not a staged scene,
even though it is a staged scene.
If they didn't want that text
in the foreground to be legible,
they could put more papers on top of it
before taking the photo.
Or in post production, they could blur it out.
They could even replace the text with another one.
Like, anything is possible.
Again, it's Photoshop.
They didn't do any of that.
They left that text legible.
It can be read if you find the photo
in high enough definition.
Turns out that text is an extract
from a US Supreme Court ruling regarding photos of children
that seem to be in explicit positions.
If I say the word, I'm gonna be in trouble with YouTube
but I left a link to that Supreme Court ruling
in the video description down below.
And even if anyone who works on that photo shoot
or on the post production didn't know about that,
the content of that Supreme Court ruling,
the word is right there and it's legible.
And it starts with a P.
Now, that's weird.
In my opinion,
the Balenciaga people knew what they were doing.
They approved the material.
Like I don't buy that they didn't see it
before it went live.
They were trying to generate PR for the gifting campaign
and making sure that the Spring 2023 campaign
also gets some visibility at the same time
by including explicit elements into both campaigns.
Shady methods
but I see how that would be linked strategically.
What I don't get is how Adidas let that happen
Because in a collab like this between two huge brands,
typically both brands would want
to approve the final materials
before any campaign, any photo goes live.
And I wondered how Adidas didn't see that.
Adidas, that is a very risk-averse company
because they're a mass market brand.
They do not want to be controversial or polarizing... ever.
I don't get that.
Now, a few days more have passed
that have I been waiting for their reactions.
So the long list of international supermodels
that lent their faces to that Spring 2023 campaign
are all keeping a very low profile on social media.
They've been called out for not calling out Balenciaga
but it's not quite fair.
Here is why?
Normally a supermodel that has an advertising contract
for a major campaign with the brand of that size,
will likely have a paragraph in their contracts
saying that they're not allowed to speak negatively
of the brands for the duration of the contract
or for like a defined period of time.
So, they can't speak out yet.
They must be doing loops and feedback with their lawyers
to see how they can separate themselves from that brand
and not go down with them... very likely.
But that's all happening behind the scenes.
The photographer of the kids photo shoot
made a statement saying
that he's not responsible for what's on the photo.
He's just in charge of taking that photo.
Classy excuse?!
FYI, if you don't like it you can just walk out.
You could but you didn't.
He also said that he has nothing to do
with the adult photo shoot,
so with the Spring 2023 campaign...
that's for the flat lay.
That's clear.
Balenciaga published quite quickly a statement to apologize.
It seems like we got caught,
so now we need to do some damage control.
So let's say whatever people want to say,
we are so, so, so, so, so sorry.
But like we've seen better apologies, frankly.
Kim Kardashian has heavily linked her own image
and intertwined it with Balenciaga for several years now.
She was called out among others.
She issued a two-part Instagram story
saying that she's shocked
and that she's reassessing her relationship with the brand.
You bet as a mother of four children...
she kind of had to say something.
Balenciaga said, and I quote,
that they "are taking legal action
against the parties responsible for creating the set
and including unapproved items
for our Spring 2023 campaign photoshoot."
So, that's not the kids campaign
that's the adult campaign, right.
They must be feeling the heat from Adidas right now
and/or from the mothership because Balenciaga
is owned by Kering which is a mega luxury company
that owns Balenciaga and many more luxury brands.
They probably don't find this funny at all
and they don't want that scandal
to reflect on their stock price basically.
But also: a campaign was planned, executed
so shot, post produced, approved
and went live without you knowing.
That's what this statement is kind of saying.
That would be scary.
I think it's completely impossible and it's dishonest
because if that's actually true
and the brand didn't know what was going live
on their own media,
then you would have to fire
the entire brand management team for incompetence.
So I guess that now they must be
trying to look for a scapegoat,
somebody to take the blame for them
so they can kind of save face and come out of it
with less damage because this is growing
so out of control that they're like,
oops maybe we went too far.
In a nutshell, Balenciaga made their own bed, literally,
not once, but twice.
Moving forward, can we please stop thinking that
"any press is good press" and leave children out of it?
My problem is that this whole story
is getting so much visibility that
it's reflecting very poorly on the entire fashion industry.
I'm seeing tweets and posts and articles
and opinion pieces and what not
saying that the fashion industry is completely rotten.
They should all get cancelled.
All right.
Please be assured that there are people
and brands in this industry
who are genuinely trying to do good and to do better,
who have strong values
and who have their priorities in order.
Please remember that.
Thank you for watching.