Designer & Fashion Insiders Behavior (PLEASE READ POST #1 BEFORE POSTING) | Page 128 | the Fashion Spot

Designer & Fashion Insiders Behavior (PLEASE READ POST #1 BEFORE POSTING)

Damn… a lot going on lol



I praise her for speaking out against CSA. After a quick search, I found out that the man in question was her stepfather, Joseph Ruffalo. He abused her for 15 years, from the age of six and her family threatened to disown her if she spoke out.

What really bothers me is that the caption shows how little some people actually bother to educate themselves and others about Kering and their brand's history and how easily they can use a woman's suffering and trauma for the sake of internet drama and clicks.

The Gucci family hasn't been involved in the brand since 1993. They were pushed out when Investicorp acquired the remaining 50% of the brand and Maurizio Gucci was replaced by Tom Ford and Domenico De Sole.

From 1995, Arnault (LVMH) had been gradually buying small shares of Gucci and in 1999, Ford and De Sole reach out to Pinault (PPR/Kering) who buys 40% Gucci for insanely cheap, diluting Arnault's shares from 34% to 20.7%. Around that time, he also acquires 100% of YSL (excluding the Haute Couture division). By the time of Ford and De Sole's departure, PPR had acquired 99.4% of Gucci.

Meanwhile, Balenciaga was revived in 1986 under Group Bogart before being bought by Pinault in 2001 along with Boucheron, Bottega Veneta, 51% of Alexander McQueen and 50% of Stella McCartney (which is now mostly independent with LVMH owning 10%).

Regardless, both Gucci and Balenciaga are on the edge right now and I pray they don't drag YSL, Bottega and McQueen with them if they go past the point of no return.
 
For what it's worth, this is late but here's an interview with the photographer, Gabrele Galimberti, by Amy Odell (formerly of The Cut back when it used to do mainly fashion).

Balenciaga Tried to Blame Contractors. It Failed.
I'll post the full article here:
Balenciaga Tried to Blame Contractors. It Failed.

I spoke to photographer Gabrele Galimberti about what really happened with the brand's disastrous holiday campaign.

Roughly a year ago, I wrote a newsletter about Chanel’s advent calendar, which had gone viral on TikTok for seeming cheap yet costing $825. The incident signaled a huge shift in culture, in which consumers delighted like never before in holding brands accountable for perceived offenses — even if those simply involved selling products of questionable quality or value.

Well, it’s almost Christmas again, and Balenciaga rudely woke up to this reality a couple of weeks ago, when consumers across social media expressed dismay and outrage over two ad campaigns, one which featured children posed with teddy bear bags that people associated with BDSM, and another that featured as props documents from a Supreme Court case about child p*rn*gr*phy.

The way Balenciaga handled the ordeal, issuing a number of statements before accepting full responsibility, only stoked the online public’s anger and disbelief. Last week, the brand filed a $25 million lawsuit against set designer Nicholas Des Jardins and production company North Six over the campaign with the court documents. Balenciaga seemed to be using them as a scapegoat, which didn’t go over well with consumers who understand that big corporate fashion brands like Balenciaga don’t release ad campaigns without numerous tiers of approval. Unlike Balenciaga, Des Jardins wasn’t famous or well known. Neither was North Six. I heard from a few people working in the fashion industry who were stunned to see Balenciaga appearing to use its might to blame contractors for the poorly received campaigns. On TikTok, fashion influencers like Erica de Lima called the lawsuit over items like the court papers that the brand claimed not to have approved for use in the ads “an insult to my intelligence,” adding, “Me as a little influencer, when I create a collab video, they have to approve the concept before I film the video, after I film, the hashtags, the caption — and you are telling me that a massive Christmas campaign, no one from Balenciaga saw it?”

Photographer Gabriele Galimberti, who photographed the pulled campaign featuring children, was not a target of the dropped lawsuit, but absorbed much of the public’s ire. The images were based on Galimberti’s series Toy Stories, which features striking photos of kids ages three to six with their toys. The series became a book that came out in 2014 and went on to have three printings. Galimberti applied the same visual style to another series, Ameriguns, that depicts Americans with their guns. A statement on his website about the series reads, “These often disturbing portraits, together with the accompanying stories based on interviews, provide an unexpected and uncommon view of what the institution of the Second Amendment really represents today.”

Galimberti spoke to me Tuesday afternoon by Zoom from Italy, where he lives. Since the Balenciaga campaign came out, he’s lost photography jobs and an exhibition, and received thousands of hateful messages, including death threats. He said that since Balenciaga released its latest statement on Friday announcing that it had decided not to take legal action against Des Jardins and North Six and accepting full responsibility for both campaigns, things are starting to calm down. Our conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Tell me about the original Toy Stories series. How did you get the idea?

It started in 2009. I had a travel column in the magazine La Repubblica. Every week, I was publishing photos and stories [about] traveling around the world by couch-surfing. A few weeks before I left for this trip — I went to 58 countries in two years — a friend called asking, “Can you take some photos of my daughter?” When I got there, Alessia, her daughter, was organizing her toys. I simply helped her to organize the toys. I took some photos, and that was the first one [in the series].

Since I was couch-surfing, I was always staying with somebody. I simply asked them, “Do you know someone with with kids?” So people were helping me to find families who wanted to be part of the project. Every time I took a new photo, of course, the parents were there. I have all the releases of the parents of the kids that I photographed because I made a book [of the series]. Everything was going fine until a week ago. It's probably my biggest success.

How did the Balenciaga campaign job start?

Balenciaga called me at the end of September. The first email that I received was from someone that worked closely with [Demna], and the email says basically, “Hello, Gabriele Galimberti blah, blah, blah. We are Balenciaga, Demna saw your work, we like your style, we like Toy Stories, we would like you to do the same thing for us.” My agent started a negotiation with them, we got the deal, so I went to Paris and I shot the photos over two days.

The campaign was my first and only work for the fashion industry. I said yes because they pay better than documentary work. The amount of money they offered is enough to pay the rent for my house in Milan for about 18 months. I'm 45. I have to pay my rent, bills, and I want to go out to dinner with my girlfriend. So if somebody comes to me and says, “We’ll pay you well for two days,” it's not easy to say no.

And what happened next?

After I decided to take this job, there were two or three weeks of emails between me and Balenciaga staff. There were always six, seven people in the same email going back and forth between me and them. In these emails, they were proposing the kids, the objects, and the location. My opinion was rarely asked and only in regards to the choice of color for the walls, curtains, or the like. They were not [otherwise] asking my opinion. They were telling me, “We decided that these are the six kids that we want to photograph.” And I received a PDF with the photos of the kids. I said, “OK, I like them.” And then they said, “[This is] the location.” I said, “OK” — because I'm a documentary photographer, that's the way I work. When I went to Paris, there were, I would say, 25 people on the set who work for Balenciaga. I was there just with my assistant and my agent.

What was the atmosphere like?

There were people from the visual office, marketing, stylists, the makeup artist, set designer plus their assistant. There were three or four people bringing stuff in and out from [other] rooms. There were a couple of workers painting the walls, moving the beds — a huge staff of people. They were preparing the set and we were using a mannequin to prepare the picture. So there was a mannequin at the center of the photo while we were organizing the set with all the objects they were bringing into the room.

I was kind of directing, because the eye is mine. So I was telling them, “I prefer more on this side, on that side.” Most of the objects were things like shoes and sunglasses. The objects that are at the center of the scandal are the two bear bags. I took some photos. The photos were going from my computer to someone else’s computer, one of these workers. And they were sending the photos to someone else at the headquarters of Balenciaga. I don't know if it was Demna. And then we were waiting for one or two hours to get approval. And once we got it approved, they said, “OK, the picture is approved, let's bring the kid in.” So we removed the mannequin. The parents came with the kid, and in five minutes we took the picture.

When they presented me the whole collection, they told me, “It's a collection inspired by punks.” I believed that because I don’t work in fashion, and even the objects for dogs [come] with [spikes] and punk elements. But I didn't see BDSM because I don’t work with [BDSM things]. For me, those bags were punk. So we took some photos with the kids for two days. And then I came back to Italy, I delivered the six photos that they selected, I sent my invoice, and that's it.

And at some point, the campaign went up and the backlash started.

Three weeks later, when they started to use the photos on Instagram and the website, the first one or two days they got positive and negative reactions. I posted one photo on my Instagram account. And I got somebody telling me, “This is nice work, it's a perfect combination between your style and a fashion brand.” And also somebody telling me, “I don't like these photos, you're selling your point-of-view to a fashion brand.” I was ready to manage that. But I was not ready at all to be accused of being a pedophile.

I don't know exactly how everything started, but somebody said, “This photographer is a pedophile. He's taking photos of these kids with BDSM things.” Within five hours, I received thousands of messages. Then Fox News did a piece on TV and everything exploded. And in that moment, Balenciaga decided to remove the photos from Instagram and the website. And they replaced that campaign with the previous campaign [with the court documents]. And in that moment, Balenciaga made the first statement, which in my opinion was not clear at all.

They said, these bags shouldn't have been photographed with children. And then they said, we are investigating who is responsible for putting these documents in the second campaign — and people thought that it was me.

So for like a week, I was sending Balenciaga five to ten emails per day asking them, please make a new statement because people have to understand that I'm not guilty of anything, because I'm receiving messages from people telling me, “We know where you live, we're coming to kill you.” Somebody found my phone number and published my number on Twitter inviting people to call me. I received dozens of phone calls in the middle of the night, like, “You have to die, pedophile.”

That sounds very scary.

It was, it was terrible for a week. Then Balenciaga, around a week later, said, “We are suing [production company] North Six, we are suing the set designer.” Again, for a completely different campaign, not the campaign I was working on. A few media [published headlines] like, “Balenciaga is suing Galimberti.” So I'm suing now a few media [outlets]. It was only a couple of days ago that everything started calming down because finally Balenciaga said, “We are not suing anyone, it's our fault.” And Demna said, “It's my responsibility, I made the wrong choices and blah, blah, blah.” But they needed ten days.

Will you continue the Toy Stories series?

I want to continue it. I'm not going to stop taking photos of children and toys just because this happened. Of course, I'm super sad because now a lot of people are trying to destroy my whole career.

You did a series in a similar visual style to Toy Stories called Ameriguns of Americans with their firearms. How did you start that project?

I've been traveling in the U.S. since 2005. I love the States, my ex-girlfriend is American. I traveled to Texas many times in the years that we were together. Then I was in Kansas in 2018 taking photos for National Geographic of a dinosaur researcher. One day I was driving outside of Kansas City. I saw this huge gun store. That was the first time I entered a gun shop. They were selling rifles, machine guns, bazookas, everything. That was the first surprise, like, Whoa, you're not only selling guns, you're selling everything for an army.

Then I started to speak with one of the customers who was curious to know why an Italian guy was there [asking] about guns. He was buying a gun, so I asked him, “Is this your first gun?” And he said, “Of course not, I have more than 60 at home.” And for me it was natural to say, “Can I come and take a picture of you?” And he said OK. So I went to his house and I applied my Toy Stories vision to that topic. A few days later, I was driving from Kansas to Texas, and I decided to go into another gun shop and try again. Within three days, I had two photos of Americans and guns. A few weeks later when I went back to Washington D.C. to deliver my work to National Geographic, I told my editor I took those two photos along the way. So they sponsored me to continue the project for a year. I took 45 photos in more than 35 states. I photographed all kinds of people — white, Black, Latinos, rich, poor, boys, girls, families, Republicans, Democrats. And I made a book called The Ameriguns.

People reading this who want to see more can do so on your Instagram feed, which you’ve said Balenciaga suggested you make private?

I made a few screenshots of the messages that I received, and I sent these screenshots to Balenciaga. I said, “I'm receiving these messages, guys, please help me because it's not nice to be attacked.” And they told me, “May we suggest to limit your accounts, turning it to private?” I said, “What? So you are asking me to hide? I'm not guilty. I don't want to hide. I built my community in 10 years of work. It's my portfolio. It's the way I get jobs. Why should I hide my account and put it in private for something that I didn't do? I didn't do anything wrong. Actually, I want to speak out.” If I closed my account it would mean to people, “He's the guilty guy.”
I actually feel bad for this man. Getting hate on social media is one thing, getting doxxed and receiving death threats is something else completely.
 
Alexandra Zarini publicly came out with her accusations against Ruffalo years ago, kind of alarming to see people digging up her experience, trying to pass it off as a scoop (no one here, just whoever made that tiktok) and trying to relate it to the Balenciaga ads. No mention of the work she currently does with The Gucci Foundation, advocating for children. In fact they seem to care so little about the actual survivor, in this case, that many commenting seem to be confusing her for Alessandra Gucci and trying to drag Hollywood into this too, via House of Gucci.

The stats often cited are that 1 in 4 girls and 1 in 6 boys are subjected to this kind of abuse. While it's fair to address institutions who cover up this sort of crime and help the perpetrators continue along their merry way, the whole idea that abuse is limited geographically, or just something "elites" do, or something Catholic priests do, is totally incorrect and potentially harmful to actual victims/survivors. But many of these people seem more interested in grandstanding and defending hypothetical children than real ones. Easy to boycott abstract powerful people or companies you never supported or had any connection with in the first place.
 
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Alexandra Zarini publicly came out with her accusations against Ruffalo years ago, kind of alarming to see people digging up her experience, trying to pass it off as a scoop (no one here, just whoever made that tiktok) and trying to relate it to the Balenciaga ads. No mention of the work she currently does with The Gucci Foundation, advocating for children. In fact they seem to care so little about the actual survivor, in this case, that many commenting seem to be confusing her for Alessandra Gucci and trying to drag Hollywood into this too, via House of Gucci.

The stats often cited are that 1 in 4 girls and 1 in 6 boys are subjected to this kind of abuse. While it's fair to address institutions who cover up this sort of crime and help the perpetrators continue along their merry way, the whole idea that abuse is limited geographically, or just something "elites" do, or something Catholic priests do, is totally incorrect and potentially harmful to actual victims/survivors. But many of these people seem more interested in grandstanding and defending hypothetical children than real ones. Easy to boycott abstract powerful people or companies you never supported or had any connection with in the first place.
This.

Alexandra's experience says more about domestic predators than it does about the fashion industry.

Also, everyone is calling her "the heir of Gucci/Balenciaga", when her family hasn't owned their name (in fashion) since '93. This information is easily found by a simple Google search, ffs.
 
Oy vey

In and of itself it's like who cares about a mattress? It's innocuous. Who would even make that connection? You're reaching. But coupled with all these other little things one starts to think "well, why did they do this shoot with what is clearly a child mattress, what was the impetus behind that creative decision?"

There's a huge can of worms, seemingly yet to be opened by the internet outrage machine, about underage models. This is just going to snowball. F*ck around and find out, I guess.
 
^same as the Balenciaga situation. A casual observer might think that the response to their ads was OTT, but if you read more about what's in them, their themes were extremely thorough. No part of that concept was accidental. Sex crimes are so incredibly common globally that really, it's only the ignorant (or very fortunate) who see nothing but innocence everywhere. Fashion does a lot of gross signaling that we pretend is just "edgy" and couldn't possibly be serious. Nevermind that we have tons of examples of impropriety within the industry that no one bothered to conceal, because what's the problem with it anyway?
 
We were just discussing that in the thread about his "couture" show.... not surprised that he was a hack, what I am surprised about is that he was such a nightmare to work with. Good timing meant a lot of press blowing smoke up his *ss and no one feeling comfortable criticising his business methods (tomfoolery, wilful waste of money, ill-treatment of employees who weren't yes-men) or output (that "couture" show) or pointing out the emperor has no clothes, until that moment passed.
 
^oh and it's worth checking out the comments on the article at The Cut too - quoting these since it's pertinent to the thread topic and in case the website again someday does that thing where they make all old comments disappear:

editor_22
(Edited)
I was an editor at the time Kerby was making a documentary on himself. It's such a long and draining story, but i will keep it simple and say this: I was preview to hundreds of hours of Kerby and his team, (the behind the scenes of Pyer Moss if you will...) while i thought many of his ideas on American Also were brilliant. He was such a terrible person to his employees. He treated them like trash to be discarded. I was struggling with making him seem like a good/honest/cool/ brilliant man when in reality all i saw was how disrespectful he was to the people around him. Including me. I was summoned to his house a couple of times to discuss the edit only for him to then talk sh*t about the young/new director he had hired to do the job. He USED people as he saw fit. Only and only caring about himself. He became the example of everything i didn't want to be professionally and as a person. He mentions in this article that he came up with an amicable solution on the film and money he owed the production company. This is not true, i believe he still owes the production company 40K. This is how saw things from my vantage point. Everyone saying this article is taking advantage of a guy with a small business is dead wrong. Idk why so many people are afraid to speak up! Those who know - KNOW! We've all been waiting for the day someone opened this door.

and

megde1988
He is a horrible guy from my experience. A few weeks after his “BLM” fashion show in 2015, where he used the mothers of the movement as chess pieces, I attended an intimate wedding in France where he was a guest. Post wedding day, in Paris, we went for happy hour with the younger friends of the bride and groom. I (BW) offered him or his date my seat so that they could sit across from each other, he responded “well nobody wants to sit there and look at you!” I was shocked cause I didn’t know him at all, what a strange thing to say to a friend’s friend. 2015 was also the period of Rachel Dolezal, in came up in convo, me being a Howard educated, Black woman (which was what Rachel was making herself out to be), I spoke about how her actions were harmful. He then cut me off and said “you need to shut up and get over it.” I left the lunch, and my friends who I had traveled with from the US stated that he said he doesn’t believe that Black people should date each other. Many, many strange things coming from someone who weeks before was getting notoriety and press from uplifting Blackness and our struggles. Our collective culture is simply a chess piece for him. If you are a Black woman that he can’t trot out for a message or dress in a poorly constructed dress you are unusable to him and thus a nuisance.

(second comment from megde1988)



And another note on not paying people… he also ordered a bunch of stuff and ditched the bill according to my friends. I sent money to my friends to cover mine because I left early as I was in grad school at the time and had assignments to work on. Being an unreasonable jerk and not paying people seems to be his patterns, it happened to us and we were only together for long weekend. I had hoped it was a one off fluke, he had casually been not the friendliest and it seemed like there was an issue with his accounts being “ hacked”, so I gave gave him grace. I had hope it was a fluke because it’s very hard to be a Black woman and criticize a Black man, let alone someone who has been appointed as “next,” but I spoke to friends in the Art and design world and heard similar stories. I’m saying something now cause I’ve been waiting for this moment when other stories came out and I’m sure there are more stories of Black women who’ve experienced what my friends and I have experienced. Ultimately, I think it had more to do with a convo that is becoming more prevalent, how we are quick to appoint and desire for a man to be a “genius”. It’s just a guy making clever shirts and being an @$s to people. There are so many brilliant black designers and artist across all fields who are kind or at a minimum not harmful to others. And somehow we continue to fall for the idea that the brash and brooding art man is our beloved hero. I hope to see Kerby become something different than who he has been, but just like the work, I haven’t seen it.
 
A lil drama going on between Vanessa Friedman and Jason Wu. First she tweeted this about his models:



He then went on a rant (plus retweeting people defending him)









She responded with a thread:







 
A lil drama going on between Vanessa Friedman and Jason Wu. First she tweeted this about his models:



He then went on a rant (plus retweeting people defending him)









She responded with a thread:








Girl, just shut up and go and support the designers that suit your standards. And shame on Wu for feeding the troll.
 
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She rattled his cage!
For him to go on such an unhinged, Trup-ish rant means he was well aware of the models. He actually told on himself. Even trying to deflect by talking about her like/dislike of his clothes (irrelevant) and a bit of whataboutism.

I mean this is hardly a blinding revelation for most of us. He is after all the same Jason Wu who inserted himself next to models in his own campaign season after season and slapped his name on everything from bathroom taps to macarons.
 

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