Kim Kardashian said she was re-evaluating her business ties with Balenciaga after the fashion brand ran a controversial campaign featuring children holding teddy bears that appear to be clad in bondage gear.
Ms. Kardashian, a reality TV star who founded the undergarment and apparel business Skims, weighed in on the controversy after critics and fans demanded over social media that she condemn the brand.
“The safety of children must be held with the highest regard, and any attempts to normalize child abuse of any kind should have no place in our society—period,” Ms. Kardashian wrote in a social media post late Sunday.
Ms. Kardashian said her future with the brand depended on “their willingness to accept accountability for something that should have never happened to begin with” as well as “the actions I am expecting to see them take to protect children.”
Balenciaga said Monday that it was investigating the matter while overhauling its creative process and introducing more oversight to prevent similar incidents from happening again. The brand also said it was “laying the groundwork with organizations who specialize in child protection.”
Kim Kardashian appeared on a Balenciaga advertising billboard near Times Square, New York, in February.
Photo:
Charles Guerin/Abaca/Zuma Press
Outrage erupted on social media last week when photos of the ad campaign began to circulate with the hashtag #cancelbalenciaga. In one photo from the ad, a child holds a bag in the shape of a teddy bear that is wearing black straps around its hands and ankles. The stuffed animal also has a metal chain around its neck.
“Our plush bear bags should not have been featured with children in this campaign,” Balenciaga designer Demna Gvasalia said.
Social-media users then zeroed in on images from an earlier ad campaign that featured a handbag lying on top of a pile of papers. Among the documents is what appears to be an excerpt of a 2008 Supreme Court ruling that upheld a criminal prohibition against child pornography.
Balenciaga filed a lawsuit in New York state against Nicholas Des Jardins, a set designer who worked on that ad campaign, and North Six, a production company involved in the photo shoot. In the lawsuit, Balenciaga alleges Mr. Des Jardins and North Six were responsible for including the excerpt of the court decision in the ad campaign.
“In no way was any controversial material intentionally placed by me or anyone on my team,” Mr. Des Jardins wrote in an email to The Wall Street Journal. “There were literally tens of thousands of papers on-set rented from a prop house,” he said.
North Six declined to comment.
Ms. Kardashian didn’t address the ad featuring the Supreme Court ruling on child pornography, and a spokeswoman declined to comment.
The brand pulled both ad campaigns and apologized for the images, saying the campaigns “reflect a series of grievous errors for which Balenciaga takes responsibility.”
Ms. Kardashian is one of the biggest ambassadors for the brand. She was one of several celebrities cast in Balenciaga’s couture fashion show in July. She brought her 9-year-old daughter to the Paris show, sitting her in the front row.
“I have been quiet for the past few days, not because I haven’t been disgusted and outraged by the recent Balenciaga campaigns, but because I wanted an opportunity to speak to their team to understand for myself how this could have happened,” Ms. Kardashian wrote in her social-media post.
Ms. Kardashian has posed for Balenciaga ad campaigns and worn its dresses at red carpet events, raising the brand’s public profile. Last year, Ms. Kardashian arrived at the Met Gala, one of the glitziest events on the fashion calendar, wearing a black Balenciaga ensemble that covered her face, making her recognizable only by her contours. She garnered almost 200 million gala-related Google results in the days that followed the event.
Write to Nick Kostov at nick.kostov@dowjones.com and Stacy Meichtry at Stacy.Meichtry@wsj.com
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