Shaheer Ahmed
Gucci, the luxury brand based in Italy, is the new face of controversy. After Balenciaga’s fiasco, Gucci has found itself in hot waters with its new ad. Seems like they can’t get it right or it wasn’t right from the beginning.
Gucci and Harry Styles have been chastised for an ad campaign in which Styles stands in a teddy bear t-shirt next to a toddler cot, just weeks after Balenciaga was caught in a child imagery crisis.
Harry Styles stars in the new ‘HA HA HA’ Gucci ad wearing a variety of clothing and holding various props. The photographs were released on November 2, just a few weeks before the Balenciaga controversy broke.
Harry Styles is shown in one photo standing in front of a toddler mattress resting against a wall, while in another he is seen touching and holding it.
He is shown changing and undressing in a series of photographs.
Former Gucci creative director Alessandro Michele, who has since left the firm, conceived the ad. The art director was Christopher Simmonds, and the photographer was Mark Borthwick.
Following the Balenciaga fiasco, which exploited children as props to market bondage-themed bears and child porn legal documents. The photographs have sparked a new uproar.
Kering, the French fashion conglomerate run by Francois-Henri Pinault, owns Gucci and Balenciaga.
Gucci described Styles’ ‘performance piece’ when it unveiled the photographs in November.
‘Play is at the core of the Gucci HA HA HA collection…after all, its name is the onomatopoeic sound of the textual essence of the ‘laughing face’ emoji, as well as the serial crisis of ‘Harry’ and ‘Alessandro.’
Balenciaga received a deluge of criticism for its most recent controversial ad campaign. Earlier this month, Balenciaga’s creative director Demna addressed the BDSM commercial scandal, which was riddled with allegations of normalising sexual fetishization and child abuse.
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