A year after triggering one of the biggest scandals in fashion history, Balenciaga is back. The luxury brand's pre-fall 2024 fashion show was attended by the likes of Kim Kardashian, Brooklyn Beckham, and Victoria Pedretti. Cardi B walked the runway, and Nicole Kidman was announced as the new face of the brand. Nothing to see here? Some fans were less than impressed with the ‘business as usual’ approach, with one noting, “I thought Balenciaga was supposed to be cancelled.”
Here, we revisit GLAMOUR's original feature about the Balenciaga scandal, including how it was picked up by conspiracy theorists and how we can continue safely holding the brand to account without descending into paranoia.
Ever wondered how to taint a time-honoured brand legacy in two days? Just ask Balenciaga. For over a century, the high fashion brand has been synonymous with wearable luxury, fluid tailoring, and – in more recent years – Kim Kardashian. However, after several atrocious styling decisions in November 2022, Balenciaga is now being uttered in the same breath as child pornography, grooming, and, err, Satan.
How did this happen? Why did a brand on the ascendancy make such catastrophic errors? Are they – as several right-wing pundits have theorised – attempting to normalise the sexual (and possibly satanic) abuse of children? Judging from the brand's response to the backlash, probably not. But rational thought aside, the scandal is clearly feeding into existing conspiracy theories – namely, those proliferated by QAnon – which can have disastrous, life-threatening ramifications.
What is the Balenciaga scandal?
The chaos started when the brand released its holiday campaign imagery featuring children holding teddy bears (or “plush bear bags”) that appeared to be dressed in BDSM fetishwear – as part of Balenciaga’s Spring/Summer 2023 collection. Other images showed children lying on a sofa behind a table topped with empty wine glasses.
As if that wasn't serious enough, a copy of a Supreme Court ruling for a case relating to child pornography was spotted – seemingly as a prop – in a separate Balenciaga campaign in collaboration with Adidas.
The brand was swiftly called out on social media, with one social media personality tweeting, "The brand "Balenciaga" just did a uh..... interesting... photoshoot for their new products recently which included a very purposely poorly hidden court document about 'virtual child porn' normal stuff," and another saying, “Hey Photographers : When Balenciaga hires you to shoot their new lookbook & you show up to find a toddler laid across a sofa with wine glasses & bondage gear arranged around them, you walk away. Period.”
How did Balenciaga respond?
A backlash ensued, prompting Balenciaga to scrap the campaign and release a statement to apologise for the “offense [the] holiday campaign may have caused,” adding, “Our plush bear bags should not have been featured with children in this campaign. We have immediately removed the campaign from all platforms.”
In another statement posted to the brand's Instagram Stories, Balenciaga apologised for the inclusion of the Supreme Court documents in the campaign, saying, "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.”
Balenciaga's attempts to quell the controversy have largely been futile. On 27 November 2022, the company filed a $25 million lawsuit against the production company of the set containing the Supreme Court documents, North Six, Inc., and the set designer Nicholas Des Jardins for the inclusion of the documents, which they argued: “horrifically associated Balenciaga with the repulsive and deeply disturbing subject of the court decision.” The lawsuit was dropped after many – including Des Jardins’s agent, Gabriela Moussaieff – accused the brand of scapegoating other parties instead of taking full responsibility for the images.
The fashion house issued a new statement on Monday after continued backlash.
What is the Balenciaga conspiracy theory?
Understandably, the controversy has reverberated into the realm of conspiracy theories. In particular, it feeds into QAnon: a far-right political movement founded on the belief that senior figures in the US government – alongside numerous celebrities, including Lady Gaga, Tom Hanks, and Beyoncé – are involved in a “global satanic sex cult” as Micheal Shermer writes in Conspiracy: Why the Rational Belive the Irrational. And who is the person QAnon followers believe is trying to dismantle this cult? None other than Donald Trump.
Right-wing media outlets and personalities have gone full satanic panic, citing the Balenciaga scandal as evidence of a global conspiracy. On Fox News, Tucker Carlson explained the overarching beliefs of conspiracy theories – without specifically highlighting QAnon – that “At the highest level of government and finance, there is a shadowy cabal of paedophiles who use their power to hide the crimes they commit against children.” While he noted that Fox News was not “endorsing that idea”, he added, “You can kind of see why people might believe it,” referencing how Jeffrey Epstein's abuse was overlooked for so long.
“Right-wing media outlets and personalities have gone full satanic panic, citing the Balenciaga scandal as evidence of a global conspiracy.”
In a clip that has over 1 million views on YouTube, Carlson interprets the Balenciaga scandal as “evidence” that “there is a tolerance for paedophilia among some – among the most powerful in our society.”
Carlson, it's worth bearing in mind, has previously refused to apologise (via The Washington Post) for saying he would “love” to hypothetically be in a scenario with young girls who were sexually experimenting and for defending Warren Jeffs – a convicted child rapist (at the time, Jeffs had been convicted as an accomplice to rape for arranging for a 14-year-old girl to get married to her 19-year-old cousin).
He goes on to accuse Balenciaga of promoting “kiddie porn and sex with children” before condemning “almost all media outlets” for “ignoring” Balenciaga's ad campaign and saying the story “effectively” died following Balenciaga's apology statement. Both of his claims are easily disprovable: As social media users began to call out the campaign on 21 November 2022, the scandal was widely reported on by many of the top media outlets in the USA, including the New York Post (on the same day); by CNN (on 23 Nov); and CBS News (on 23 Nov). In the weeks since, search for “Balenciaga controversy” has spiked dramatically (per Google Trends), with news outlets devoting column inches to it accordingly.
While Carlson's point is persuasively made, other right-wing media personalities are frantically grasping for more ‘evidence’ to prove that the Balenciaga incident is not isolated. Sebastian Gorka, the former Deputy assistant to then-President Donald Trump, tweeted a campaign image of Kylie Jenner posing naked in a pool of ‘blood’, adding, “So you think the #BalenciagaGate story is a one-off? An outlier? This still is from Kylie Jenner’s promo for her “makeup” line.” Indeed, the image was from Jenner's makeup line, a horror-inspired collaboration with Nightmare on Elm Street…for Halloween.
As well as implying Jenner's involvement with the Balenciaga scandal – beyond wearing its merch now and again, she has no current partnership with the brand – Gorka is reinforcing one of the fundamental beliefs of QAnon: that all these (unfounded) allegations of a child sex-trafficking ring are grounded in Satanism.
We investigate.
What is the Satanic Panic?
The ‘Satanic Panic’ refers to the moral panic that swept across the USA and other parts of the world in the ‘80s and ’90s, culminating in numerous high-profile criminal trials in which people were accused of (and often imprisoned for) committing ritualistic sexual abuse against children. In most cases, the ‘proof' for these accusations and convictions was based on coercion from parents and authority figures (including social workers and police officers), the misuse of leading questions, and dubious medical examinations.
In a comprehensive history of the Satanic Panic, Aja Romano wrote for Vox that the panic “never truly went away,” arguing that its “legacy threads through American culture and politics, in everything from social media moralizing to QAnon.” They cite the backlash to Lil Nas X's 'Montero (Call Me by Your Name)’ music video; the trial of Amanda Knox, in which Knox was described as “Lucifer-like, Satanic, demonic, diabolical, a witch of deception;” and, of course, the emergence of QAnon.
“It's easier to believe that a dark cabal is orchestrating negative events than it is to believe that powerful people, including our leaders, are simply greedy or incompetent.”
While there are some key differences between the Satanic Panic in the '80s and the QAnon-adjacent theories of ritualistic, satanic child abuse, Romano notes that “the tools used to spread both ideas — alarmism, fearmongering, hysteria, and reports of wildly gothic scenes of blood-drinking, children harvested for body parts, and witches” are pretty much the same.
This alarmism is present in many responses to the Balenciaga campaign. Lotta Volkova, a celebrated stylist, became the target of social media users who incorrectly identified her as a “designer for Balenciaga” and posted images of an unnamed model holding two dolls which appeared to be covered in fake blood, again incorrectly identifying the model as Volkova.
“You want me to believe what [Balenciaga] did was an accident? No, they are Satanic pedophiles that need to be exposed…” reads one tweet alongside a derogatory TikTok about Volkova.
A spokesperson for Volkova told Newsweek that she has “not worked with Balenciaga or its team since 2018 and she has in no way participated in the brand's recent Instagram or advertising campaigns.”
Elsewhere on Twitter, users posting on the #BalenciagaGate hashtag have made false connections between Balenciaga and Hillary Clinton (here), Kamala Harris (here), and Celine Dion (here) – with satanic imagery featuring heavily throughout.
Where do we go from here?
In the midst of a resurgent moral panic, Balenciaga's dramatic oversights were always going to stoke existing conspiracy theories. But why are some of us more inclined to believe in a satanic, child-abusing cabal than the more realistic explanations of corporate incompetence?
Mike Rothschild, the author of The Storm Is Upon Us: How QAnon Became A Movement, Cult, and Conspiracy Theory of Everything, engages directly with this question, writing:
“Q lets people feel like they're part of something bigger than their small lives. It gives believers a higher and noble purpose. It offers explanations for terrible things. After all, it's easier to believe that a dark cabal is orchestrating negative events than it is to believe that powerful people, including our leaders, are simply greedy or incompetent.”
Speaking to GLAMOUR, Mike reflects on the enduring nature of satanic conspiracy theories, highlighting that anything that involves children will make people “take leave of their senses.”
“It separates you from your family, from your friends, from your hobbies. The things that you used to care about and the people who used to be in your life, they don't mean as much anymore because you start to see everything wrapped up with the conspiracy.”
“You become sort of a self-styled crusader,” he adds. "Even if what you're crusading against doesn't exist. And the people who actually are trying to assist trafficked or missing children don't want your help and are telling you to stop […] It's not about the kids. It's about you and it's about your feelings and your truth.
“And this stuff it's very salacious and it's weird, and it makes you feel like you're sort of touching something forbidden and you're not supposed to, and it's evil, and oh, you've got the courage to confront evil. I mean, again, you don't, but you think you do because the rest of your life is just not that interesting.”
In The Storm Is Upon Us, Mike highlights the dangerous road that people engaging with these theories often walk, including committing domestic terrorism. However, he tells GLAMOUR, they also wreak havoc on personal relationships:
"It separates you from your family, from your friends, from your hobbies. The things that you used to care about and the people who used to be in your life, they don't mean as much anymore because you start to see everything wrapped up with the conspiracy, with the Secret War.
"And of course, the people around you, they don't want to hear about it […] And it's very alienating to everybody else, and it isolates you and it forces you deeper into the community of other people who believe the same things."
It might sound extreme to conclude that engaging in far-off theories about Balenciaga can descend into full-blown paranoia, but, sadly, that's exactly how conspiracy theories work. So how do we call-out Balenciaga for their unacceptable actions without propping up far-right conspiracies? “Stick to the truth,” recommends Mike.
Was the Balenciaga shoot in bad taste? Yes, of course. But there's simply no meaningful evidence to suggest it was anything more than that. No matter, how tempting it might feel to believe otherwise.
For more from Glamour UK's Lucy Morgan, follow her on Instagram @lucyalexxandra.
