Balenciaga's fire sale

I've never been a dedicated follower of fashion, but growing up I was definitely aware of beautiful ladies, of glamor girls. We cut out pictures of movie stars doing ads in magazines. I distinctly remember clipping a pic of Terry Moore - an actress I'd never heard of. Who went to movies, other than Disney flicks? We watched TV. Lucille Ball and Loretta Young, I knew. Terry Moore? Who dat? Nonetheless, the ad - probably for hairspray or Midol - must have said Hollywood or movie star. So I clipped away.

I had Cyd Charisse paperdolls; my sister Kath had Eleanor Powell. We didn't know Cyd Charisse and Eleanor Powell from Terry Moore. I picked the Cyd Charisse paper dolls out of a Christmas grab at the YWCA. God know where Eleanor Powell came from. But Cyd and El were glamorous, and, oh, those paper gowns!

We also cut out pictures of anonymous women in long chiffon ballgowns, leaning up against pillars, advertising sanitary napkins. Modess...because.

In the background of all this was the notion of designers who created all these ballgowns. My mother's fashion may have been straight out of Ship 'n Shore, but I knew the names of plenty of famous designers. Balmain. Dior. Balenciaga.

Haute couture, baby.

Ah, Balenciaga. 

Not that I've kept up with their goings and comings, other than making note of their $2K tote bag that was a knock off of the IKEA blue bag. And their $600 Crocs sneakers. But I did see that Balenciaga is in beaucoup de trouble.

The fashion house is hurting. While 2022 started out strong, an ad scandal hit them hard.  The brand has been selling its high end goods at fire-sale prices - up to 70 percent off. And they've been losing the fealty of key ambassadors. Fashionistas like Kim Kardashian, who has severed ties with Balenciaga, and has been marking down Balenciaga items on Kardashian Kloset, Kim's clothing resale site. (Note to self: go take a peek in Kim's closet.) And TikTok has been en fuego with influencers burning their Balenciaga goods to protest the brand. A couple of stores have been vandalized.

Even with the steep markdowns, Balenciaga prices are still cra. One retailer was marking a plain white t-shirt down from $750 to $345. (Point of comparison: you can get a plain white t for less than $10 at Old Navy.)

The root cause of Balenciaga's troubles is its truly disturbing 2022 Holiday ad campaign, which: 

...featured children posing with its Plush Toy Bag. The bags look like teddy bears and are dressed in BDSM gear.

In the photo shoot, the kids also appeared surrounded by empty wine and champagne glasses. (Source: Daily Mail)

To make matters even worse, the ad campaign had been "styled," and showed papers strewn around the kids - papers that featured "the legal text on child pornography...a printout of a Supreme Court ruling on whether or not internet child porn can be legally considered free speech."

Aren't we clever...

An upcoming spring campaign, continuing on the child porn theme, shows in the background a "book of an artist whose work depicts naked, castrated toddlers."

Aren't we clever...

While eventually apologizing for their campaign, Balenciaga offered a few excuses: the kids in the ad were all the children of employees, who were there for the shoot, and didn't see anything wrong; those BDSM bags weren't BDSM bags, they're just plain punk. 

Balenciaga also noted that the porn-related props were provided by the company they hired to "style" the shoot. They hadn't realized that such troubling material was included. They'd trusted the stylist. 

Amazing, that no one thought to look at what props were surrounding the kids in the ad. Also amazing that parents were okie-dokes with their kiddos in what - porn props aside - was a pretty provocative display. No one thought to question posing kids around empty booze glasses? It didn't occur to anyone that those punk teddy bears looked a bit BDSM-y?

Or is edgy just fine, and those of us who find this type of edgy distasteful+ are just prudes.

All so disturbing. There's so much pornification of kids out there. All those little miss whatever's provocatively pouting for judges. All those ads with very young models in highly sexualized poses. 

Count me in as an old prude who's happy to have grown up when kids played with Cyd Charisse paper dolls, and cut pictures of Modess ladies out of magazine ads. Give me Terry Moore flogging Midol any old day. (And I don't mean flogging literally...)

Balenciaga deserves its fire sale, that's for sure.