Balenciaga has filed a $25 million lawsuit against the producers of a controversial ad campaign that included a child pornography court ruling and BDSM teddy bears, new court papers show.
The fashion house brought the suit Friday against production company North Six, Inc. and set designer Nicholas Des Jardins and his eponymous company. The ads included legal documents from a US Supreme Court decision on child porn laws.
The fashion brand ad showed unsettling pictures of a child holding teddy bears dressed in bondage outfits. The two-page court summons doesn’t mention the BDSM teddy bears.
Balenciaga is bringing the case “to seek redress for extensive damages defendants caused in connection with an advertising campaign Balenciaga hired them to produce,” the Manhattan Supreme Court summons alleges.
Balenciaga claims North Six and Des Jardins included the images of the court docs without its knowledge – which was “malevolent or, at the very least, extraordinarily reckless,” the filing claims.
“As a result of Defendants’ misconduct, members of the public, including the news media, have falsely and horrifically associated Balenciaga with the repulsive and deeply disturbing subject of the court decision,” the court papers charge. “Defendants are liable to Balenciaga for all harm resulting from this false association.”
On Tuesday, the company announced it had pulled the teddy bear ads.
Meanwhile, the photographer of the bear ad, Gabriele Galimberti, wrote on Instagram he wasn’t in control of the “direction of the campaign and the choice of the objects displayed.”
Amid scrutiny of the campaign, one eagle-eyed watchdog spotted the high court documents about child pornography laws.
North Six and a rep for Des Jardins didn’t immediately return a request for comment.
[Written in collaboration with other media outlets with information from the following sources]
