In the past decades, many fashion brands have been in troubles with scandals of racism, cultural appropriation and other form of offense towards vulnerable groups. 

In 2022 Balenciaga, has been accused of sexualizing children in their fashion campaign they seemed relate minors to BDSM content. After the event, the brand's sales rapdly started to decrease.  

That year Balenciaga wanted to bring more diversity into his product chain by adding  children’s clothing. However, the fashion campaign has raised public discontent toward the advertisement and brand image by being accused of sexualizing underages by placed the leather-strapped toys in the hands of the children.

It is not clear if this was the intention of the product or creative team. Why would a successful brand like Balenciaga have such a scandal? I believe one reason lies in the brand's unfamiliarity and lack of coherence when expanding into new categories of product. With the increasing demands of the conglomerate for profits, brand should have much more diversity in their products, such as furniture, children's clothing, cosmetics, sunglasses, and more. Since the brand itself do not have the ability to produce such products, these new fusion line often require outsourcing or other manufacturers, but it’s also very likely to make the products to deviate from the brand image. Especially when Balenciaga, as such a avant-garde and rebellious image, enters the children's clothing market, the consistency of its brand image needs stricter control. Therefore, before marketing is implemented, it is crucial to predict the actual effect and public’s respond as much as possible. In addition to controlling details as much as possible, defining the subtle differences in the audience between different categories is necessary, especially for new and immature product categories, requiring preliminary consumer research to avoid risks.

 However, it is not clear if this was the intention of the product or creative team. has provided another point of view in my understanding of children's sex education.

This implies that when discussing children's sexual orientation and gender awareness, should sexual preferences also be included in the discussion? From a positive perspective, this could be an opportunity for the brand’s advertisement to break new ground and turn the situation around. 

We want to offer a clear vision into the fashion industry of how does fashion scandals make an impact on the brand and be aware of that scandals can create really negative feedback towards brands image in such a short time nowadays.

Even though Balenciage didn’t seem to pay enough attention in it’s own apology, the impression of the brand image has been worse among the public and consumers until they came up with a second apology two weeks later. Also creative director Demna  apologized on his social media platforms to state that he has zero tolerance toward underage pornography.

It is also crucial for the public to be aware that it is important to voice up for the vulnerable groups, especially in an era of social media when our comment and attitude are much more valuable.s

Leon: make research and collect information about the fashion scandals from the past decades

Lolo: Chose one of the fashion scandals and makes deeper research into the category, analyze the scandals from a point of the view of financial benefits, crisis public relation and cultural content.

We will gather reliable information to investigate into the specific question that we came up with the fashion scandals. And use resources such as the school library and online content. Also, it is crucial to figure out how does everyone feel about the fashion scandal so we are going to make an interview around the school to gather much more personal opinion and comments toward the social issues.

As a group, we do understand the fashion scandals can create controversy, especially nowadays on social media. Fashion scandals can either have positive or negative impacts. From a positive point of view, fashion scandal can also be profitable for the brand as a form of promotion and marketing strategy.

However, in the era of social media, fashion scandals can raise much more attention and negative feedback from its target group and consumer who can actually make a direct impact on the brand’s profit.

We have made our research into the fashion scandals of children pornography from Balenciaga 2022 campaign, and we are intend to make our deeper research into how does the scandal make an impact on the brand, and why did a famous and successful brand make such a mistake by looking into the specified data of sales volume from the brand. Balenciaga took down every product related to the notorious campaign from it’s official website and delete everything from its instagram page, however this does not end the scandals. Even though the brand shift to the blaming to the third-party company, but Balenciaga still have the right of examination and verification so it does not make any sense for the brand suing the production company for $25 million over its controversial campaign.