Unless you’ve been living under a rock then you probably know that in November 2022, Balenciaga came under fire for 2 campaigns, the first one being the Christmas 2022 campaign which featured children holding teddy bears wearing leather harnesses and what the public perceived as S and M style. The second was the Spring 2023 office themed campaign which featured a Balenciaga x Adidas hourglass tote bag that sat on legal documents which twitter users pointed there was a page from a Supreme Court ruling that states child pornography is not protected by free speech. Social media users were furious, condemning Balenciaga, its creative director Demna and even brand ambassador Kim Kardashian. French luxury group Kering which owns Balenciaga saw a fall in stock price and even the Business of Fashions Global Voices Award which Denma was going to win was rescinded.

Now you’re probably thinking good on people for cancelling Balenciaga and although I agree that the campaigns were disgusting, I believe instead of cancelling Balenciaga as a whole we should cancel the people responsible for the campaigns. Balenciaga is around 106 years old and has survived 2 world wars. Cristobal Balenciaga first founded his haute couture house in San Sebastian in Spain and quickly rose to fame with the Spanish Royal Family and Aristocracy wearing his pieces. He then moved to Paris due to the Spanish Civil War and opened his House. He was met with instant success with clients risking travel to Europe during World War 2 for Balenciaga’s designs. Balenciaga’s impact on the fashion world has been immense from inventing the gazar d’Abraham fabric to inventing dress silhouettes like the sack, it’s no wonder Christian Dior said, “Haute Couture is like an orchestra whose conductor is Balenciaga”. Cancelling Balenciaga would mean ending a fashion house that has changed the literal landscape of fashion and now you may not care about this “stuff” but as Miranda Priestly infamously says to Andrea Sachs when she laughs at a conversation about two blue belts that look similar in the Devil Wears Prada “that blue represents millions of dollars of countless jobs, and it’s sort of comical how you think that you’ve made a choice that exempts you from the fashion industry when, in fact, you’re wearing a sweater that was selected for you by the people in this room… from a pile of “stuff”. This highlights that designers like Balenciaga evidently dictate what the people of today wear no matter how unconscious you are about fashion.

The next point I want to make in why I think Balenciaga shouldn’t be cancelled is that other brands have been allowed to move on from their scandals and are thriving such as Gucci with its balaclava knit jumper from the Autumn Winter 2018 collection in which the black jumper covers the bottom half of the face and has a cut-out mouth with large red lips which was perceived as blackface by the public.