“It belongs to my mate, I didn’t know it was there!” didn’t wash as an excuse when my Mum found a pack of cigarettes in my room all those years ago, and it’s not washing as an excuse for planting apparent pro-paedophilia material in a fashion catalogue.
Snooty fashion label Balenciaga is desperately try to hose down the firestorm ignited by its recent catalogue, which featured not only little girls posing with teddies in BDSM gear, but strategically placed material which seems fairly obviously to be coded references to paedophilia advocacy. Strategically positioned printouts of a court ruling which declared “virtual child porn” as protected free speech are odd accessories for a fashion photoshoot — so how did they get in there?
The company said they were supplied by “a third party”, and were used earlier in a television drama.
“It belonged to our mate, we didn’t know it was there!” I’d suggest that Balenciaga’s mums take their collective slippers off and give them a sharp whack for lying, but something tells me they’d rather enjoy that.
“All the items included in this shooting were provided by third parties that confirmed in writing that these props were fake office documents,” Balenciaga said in the statement.
“They turned out to be real legal papers most likely coming from the filming of a television drama.”
ABC Australia
Name this “television drama”, then.
Even if we accepted such a lame excuse, that doesn’t explain how that particular document — the one relating to child pornography — just happened to be so prominently featured in the photo.
Nor does it explain the other apparent pro-paedophilia Easter eggs hidden in other photos.
Another photo in the campaign features a model sitting in an office chair inside a high-rise building.
Behind the model, Twitter users pointed out a copy of a book called Fire from the Sun by an artist named Michael Borremans.
A quick Google of the book will reveal Borremans’ paintings of children running around naked, looking at and holding severed body parts covered in blood.
ABC Australia
There was also a third photo — at least — featuring what appeared to be a coded reference to child pornography. Once might be a coincidence.
And were they really “accidental”? After all, the photographer responsible, Gabriele Galimberti, once stated that, “I love details and sometimes I need five or six hours to take one photo… I do a lot of pre-production”. It doesn’t sound like things just “accidentally” end up in his photos.
Mind you, Gamberti also questioned “Why restrict child porn but not guns?”
And there’s still the fact that Balenciaga signed off on — approved — photos of little girls posing with BDSM-themed material.
Don’t try and tell us those were left behind by a “television drama”.
