Kim Kardashian, arguably Balenciaga’s most high-profile brand ambassador, has issued a statement about her relationship with the fashion house after disturbing ads featuring children were published online.
“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 wrote in a statement published to her social accounts on Sunday, November 27.
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“As a mother of four, I have been shaken by the disturbing images. The safety of children must be held with the highest regard and any attempts to normalize child abuse of any kind should have no place in our society—period,” she wrote.
Last week, shoppers called out the Spanish fashion house for publishing photos of children holding teddy bears wearing leather harnesses and cuffs to its website. “Balenciaga using photos of little girls playing with teddy bears dressed in bondage gear on their website. Lovely,” wrote one user on Twitter. In another ad for Balenciaga’s collaboration with Adidas, documents pertaining to child pornography laws are clearly visible in the foreground. Observant users have since found even more references to the exploitation of children in campaigns published earlier this year.
Kardashian concluded her statement addressing her “future” with the fashion house. “I am currently re-evaluating my relationship with the brand, basing it off their willingness to accept accountability for something that should have never happened to begin with—[and] the actions I am expecting to see them take to protect children,” she wrote.
In a statement posted to its Instagram Stories last week, Balenciaga condemned the “abuse of children in any form” and noted it planned to take legal action against the “parties responsible for creating the set and including unapproved items for our spring 23 campaign photoshoot.”
