DARKNESS BY DESIGN | PART 1: BAALENCIAGA

July 30, 2024 RiseAttire

Why does high fashion seem so demonic? Why are some of the world’s largest brands attempting to normalize pedophilia? In DARKNESS BY DESIGN – PART 1: BAALENCIAGA, Rise Attire investigates the occult ideology that has subverted the fashion brand Balenciaga.

SCRIPT & SOURCES

In late November of 2022, the luxury fashion brand Balenciaga released what would become two of the most controversial ad campaigns in the history of the fashion industry. The ads eerily featured toddlers amidst an array of Balenciaga accessories, BDSM teddy bears, pedophilic easter eggs*, and subtle nods to old pagan gods—all of which served to heighten the already growing curiosity regarding degeneracy and even occultism in high places. The campaigns drew outrage in the post-Epstein era, and came on the heels of loosely related cultural phenomena like PizzaGate, Spirit cooking, Satanic Nikes, the Wayfair controversy and the public’s growing concern over Hollywood’s affinity for spiritual darkness.

The sensationalism would eventually wear off, leaving people with the feeling that they had caught a glimpse of something important, but were left with more questions than answers. What was really going on here? Are there deeper implications or was this truly just the result of poor creative decision making, as implied by the brands creative director? No, there had to be. The real question for most of us became, how bad is it? How had Balenciaga, historically one of the most tasteful, refined and widely respected names in couture, come to this?

History of Balenciaga

Balenciaga’s origin story is a classic rags-to-riches tale.

The brand’s founder, Cristobal Balenciaga, was born in a small town called Getaria in the Basque region of Spain in 1895. He began his career working as a tailor’s apprentice at the age of 12, and as a teenager his work caught the eye of the marquesa de Casa Torres, a local noblewoman who would become his primary patron, eventually sending him to Madrid where he’d be formally trained as a tailor. (#,#,#)

By the time Cristobal turned 24 he’d already acquired an impressive clientele base, was widely held as a prodigy and had established his own couture boutique in San Sebastian. His clientele at the time was mostly Spanish aristocracy and even members of its royal family. The Spanish Civil War would eventually force him to relocate to Paris where he would establish the very first boutique with the now iconic branding “Balenciaga.”

It was at this time that the designer fashion industry was really reaching a new zenith, with many of the names we recognize today coming into prominence, such as Parisian brands Dior, Chanel, Louis Vuitton and the much older Hermès as well as Italian brands like Gucci, Prada and Fendi. But Balenciaga was particularly revered and admired,even among his competitors. The legendary french designer Christian Dior said of his rival:

“Haute couture is like an orchestra for which Balenciaga is the conductor. The rest of us are just musicians following the directions he gives us.” (#)

Coco Chanel, another iconic founder, shared similar admiration, saying:

“…the only true couturier amongst us, able to design, cut, assemble and sew a dress entirely by himself.” (#)

At the height of his career, Cristobal was widely seen as a true master of his craft; he inspired up and coming designers like Oscar de la Renta and Hubert de Givenchy, boasted clientele such as Mona von Bismarck, Gloria Guinness, Grace Kelly, Ava Gardner, Audrey Hepburn, and Jackie Kennedy, he’d even design the dress worn by Queen Fabiola of the Belgians to her royal wedding in 1960. (#) Cristobal would retire from the world of high fashion in 1968, at the age of 74, and to the surprise of many, he made the decision to end the brand along with his career, stating that:

“High fashion is mortally wounded.”[#]

Cristobal was not impressed with the direction that high fashion had been taking; in his mind, if he was done designing then there was no reason that the brand should continue. A common theme with big designer brands, like Armani, Prada and Chanel, is the reverence they display for their founders. They take great pride in the fact that they’re “family-owned,” often boasting storied histories of each brand’s rise to prominence… So how is it that Balenciaga, with Cristobal having no heir, nor desire to see the house live on, continues to dominate high fashion today? (#) Is it possible that their claim to the original house founded in 1917 is really a matter of fiction?

Following his death, in 1972 the rights to his brand name would be sold against his stated will by an estranged nephew to the German chemical manufacturer Hoechst AG, one of the cofounders of IG Farben, a lingering relic of Hitler’s war machine that was known for supplying Zyklon B, the cyanide-based pesticide said to have been used at Auschwitz. (#, #, #, #) The reason for Hoechst’s acquisition of the brand was to continue its popular perfume line. The rights would be sold again in 1986 to another chemical company before finally being picked up in 2001 by Kering, a multinational corporation specializing in luxury brands.

When Cristobal died, Balenciaga was laid to rest as well, but the grave was robbed and the brand reanimated through economic necromancy. It would lumber around for years, passing through the hands of several designers until finally a new spirit came into Balenciaga: Demna Gvisalia.

the DEMNA ERA

Cristobal Balenciaga, while never one to shy away from the unconventional, maintained a very distinct style and taste, even his most daring designs were marked by a signature elegance. The Balenciaga of today, that is the Balenciaga under Demna Gvasalia, seems intent on doing the opposite.

Demna’s signature style, which he imported from his own label Vetements, brought a much darker aesthetic to the brand, making it almost unrecognizable in comparison to the brand’s alleged roots in elegant couture.. To better understand this edgy new motif, there is hardly a more perfect encapsulation than the runway show for Balenciaga’s summer 23’ collection. The runway was a pool of mud, the mood was ominous, the music, produced by Demna’s spouse loïk gomez, was anxiety inducing (sample, #), the BDSM handbags were on full display, models lurked the runway awkwardly, brandishing bruised faces and the look of fear you’d see in abuse victims, some looking almost possessed. Several of the male models walked with a life-like baby doll strapped to their chests draped in dirty black trench coats, caged teddy bears in hand. [Clip]

But these disturbing themes went far beyond just a soiled facade, as evidenced in this rare behind the scenes clip. Upon request, an uncomfortable male model opens up his bag to show us what’s inside, revealing a blanket, teddy bear and pacifier spattered in fake blood, at a loss of words.

As disconcerting as this all was, there was also a clownishness to it that left many of us wondering, what’s this really all about? and had Cristobal undoubtedly rolling over in his grave.

This sinister chic would become the norm at Balenciaga. The brand’s whole vibe was now steeped in a very bleak modern darkness; a darkness that would culminate into two of the most controversial ad campaigns in the history of fashion.

The Ad Campaigns

It’s true that art is often provocative and edgy, the activist and street artist Banksy popularized a quote by Mexican poet and academic Cesar A. Cruz, who famously wrote that:

“Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable” (#)

To the painter, there are no forbidden colors; no hue is considered sufficiently distasteful that it is discarded completely. For the truly creative, whether their medium is the written word, audio, video or applied art, the concept of spiritual darkness is a very real force in this world; one that can serve the artist in delivering a truth, moral or statement. But where does one draw the line between artistry and darkness for the sake of darkness, or perhaps for the sake of something worse? How can we differentiate between pushing boundaries and genuine malintent? It’s like the question of what constitutes pornography, sometimes you just know it when you see it.

The now infamous “Balenciaga Gift Shop” ad campaign for their Christmas 2022 collection featured multiple toddlers posing next to plush teddy bear bags adorned with BDSM gear and seemingly swollen, bruised eyes, surrounded by an array of adult accessories: Black vinyl tape used for bondage, wine glasses, beer cans, flask, chains from bags laid out in the shape of 2… well, judge for yourself, ski masks, a child’s drawing of a burning home and demonic imagery, a heart-shaped doggie bed, white rabbit symbolism, kids with sad or scared looks on their faces for models- some laying down as if drunk or drugged, a dog leash, a dog bowl that looks like a spiked collar. All of this together painted a disturbing picture, one that was seemingly attempting to glamourize child abuse. But it didn’t stop there.

The other ad, this one showcasing the Spring/Summer 2023 collections, wasn’t offensive at first glance like the previous campaign. It was a mostly innocuous office shoot showcasing a collaboration between Balenciaga and Adidas. However, in one image, an hourglass handbag is placed on top of a pile of papers strewn across an office desk. Anonymous internet sleuths enhanced the image to get a closer look at the papers and discovered one of the documents was the text from a U.S. Supreme Court case, U.S. v. Williams, which criminalized child pornography. The portion shown in the picture cites another Supreme Court case, Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition, which made virtual child porn protected speech.(#) Another picture in the collection featured Isabelle Huppert sitting in front of a stack of books including one celebrating Michael Borremans, a Belgian painter whose work is known to include graphic depictions of castrated toddlers. Beneath it was another book called The Cremaster Cycle, featuring the film and performance art of Matthew Barney which is just as disturbing, if not more so. His work features running themes of cannibalism and abortion, set against the backdrop of a demonic, dystopian-style futurism.

Together, these campaigns would immediately spur a wave of scrutiny bordering on righteous indignation, from the most fringe conspiracy theorists to milquetoast normies across the country who accused the brand of sexualizing children.

Balenciaga responded with the wiping of all their social media, followed by a very public blame game with execs blaming creatives, creatives blaming execs, and the general public blaming everyone involved. The fashion house’s response to the scandal was put under the microscope by fashion magazines, marketers and crisis management firms the world over, the general consensus being that nobody was buying what the Balenciaga execs were selling. (#,#) Demna would break his silence in early December, issuing a statement of his own:

But others in the industry didn’t believe that Demna should be off the hook. Zara Ineson, the executive creative director at House 337, opined that:

There are months of planning and ironing out every detail of an idea between the brand and the production team/photographer. On the day, there are big teams and people running around all over the place – it can feel chaotic and things can slip through the net. However, the brand’s creative director rules the roost. If they’re doing their jobs, they scrutinize every detail of a shot and make the final call on when they’ve got it right to move on.“(#)

Regarding Demna’s involvement, Ineson said:

“It doesn’t matter if he was on the shoot or not. He would’ve signed the campaign off before it was released.“(#)

As with all controversies, the ad scandal would eventually disappear from headlines, with the debacle being labeled in the news as the result of poor marketing, but the public wasn’t willing to accept the verdict. Kering would report that sales took a hit in the US and UK as a new TikTok trend emerged of people burning their balenciaga merchandise [use footage #,#of people destroying their gear]. The media may have lost interest in the story, but the internet was just getting started. Soon, everyone involved with the brand—even those only tangentially involved with Demna—would be scrutinized by the autists and armchair investigators of the world wide web.

Demna is known for the company that he keeps, being a major collaborator with Kim Kardashian and Kanye West, but he also keeps close industry friends like model and stylist Lotta Volkova, who worked at Balenciaga previously, [pics #,#,#,#] and Minttu Vesala, one of the brand’s premier runway models. [clip]

When the scandal first broke, It was his association with Volkova and their tendency for occult and generally uncomfortable imagery that led people to assume their involvement in the satanic underground. Volkova’s instagram, which featured a bevy of images ranging from the weird to the sinister, would be flooded with accusatory comments.

It didn’t help that both Demna and Volkova are close with Gosha Rubchinskiy, a Russian streetwear designer who was accused of pressuring a 16 year old boy to send explicit images of himself.

Regarding these accomplices, Demna once wrote in an instagram post that:

“Someone wrote that Lotta (Balenciaga stylist), Gosha, and I grew up on child pornography and radiation from Chernobyl, which is why we’re so f*cked up.“(#)

Beyond the sexualization of children, Balenciaga appears to have an interest in both the arcane arts and the impending technocratic dystopia as well. In 2021, while the world was forced to isolate themselves indoors during the COVID-19 pandemic, Balenciaga released their Fall 21 collection inside a 3d web-based video game using the Unreal engine, a project called Afterworld: the Age of Tomorrow. The game sees players traverse several “zones” within what looks like a Smart City wonderland set in the not-too-distant future, where a white rabbit eventually leads the player to a secret rave in the woods. [show some snippets here] The surroundings are bleak, the mood is eerie, and peppered throughout are subtle symbols, including the white rabbit of Alice in Wonderland and MKULTRA lore, as well a decapitated man placed inside of a labyrinth. This symbol is of particular interest, as it is the symbol associated with Acéphale, which was both a publication and secret society created by the french philosopher Georges Bataille.

Both the cult and the publication were established in France in the late 1930s. The image is an occult take on Da Vinci’s Vitruvian man, a symbol meant to depict classical reason, with the head noticeably removed, a skull placed in the groin region, a burning heart in its right hand while wielding a dagger in its left. Bataille considered Acephale an “anti-religion” and a religion unto itself, it’s made clear in their work that this symbol of the decapitated man is meant to represent the death of God and reason. The Public Review included poetry, essays and arts, all dealing heavily in philosophy, esotericism, Nietzche, and opposing facism, Nazism, Christianity and even democracy. The Secret Society by the same name was not simply another reading and discussion group, but a genuine occult society that was known to conduct torch-lit rituals in a forest which were believed to have included human sacrifice. (#,#,#,#,#)

In the same way Balenciaga loves to portray a bleak dystopian future through their work, so too did Bataille and the cult Acephale. In 1947 they published Encyclopaedia Da Costa (Da Costa Encyclopédique), meant to coincide with the International Surrealist Exhibition in Paris. Most notable in it was an entry about a future they foresaw where a “license to live” was required to be on your person at all times, with the failure to keep yours “in order” being death. Acephale set forth a stated mission of war on God, conventional beauty and societal norms, in a very literal way. They saw the potential for use of modern art and culture in this dark agenda, and claimed to have successfully infiltrated the surrealist movement for that purpose. They also boasted of their cult’s membership of high society figures in the fields of science, philosophy, and psychiatry.

They intellectualized themself into a pretzel to justify what amounts to pure degeneracy and evil, awarding themself full ethical license to “Do what they will” in their religious pursuit of holy war against God.

Demna’s fascination with Acephale’s dark legacy and Bataille’s teachings, and his deliberate choice to include a poster brandishing the cult’s name in Afterworld speaks volumes about his philosophy. It actually allows us to make better sense of the brand’s otherwise outrageous creative direction decisions.

Though the scandal fell from relevance, things felt unresolved, like there was something still lurking behind it all. Were these campaigns merely the result of poor decision making, or did the world collectively bear witness to a brief glimpse of a concealed malevolence? There are too many variables pointing in the direction of intention to ignore, from the inclusion of children in the shoot, the supreme court ruling, the Michael Borremans book and especially the altering of the brand’s name to incorporate a Canaanite-Phoenician god associated with Child sacrifice. When all of these things are factored together, it’s hard to believe that this was all an honest mistake. But does the buck stop with Demna and company? Or could it be that the true evil here runs much deeper than a mere photographer, stylist and creative director. The fact remains that, despite assurances to the contrary, Balenciaga’s execs likely signed off on every aspect of these shoots. But does it end with Balenciaga? How far up the chain does the cultural rot go?

Are the masses simply paranoid? Or is this spiritual darkness something that’s endemic in the designer fashion industry and high society in general? Perhaps a deeper dive into the industry as a whole is merited to truly understand the scope of this evil, and what we can do about it.