Balenciaga accused of racism over Rp16.9 million sweatpants

Balenciaga was accused of racism over its Trompe-L'Oeil grey sagging sweatpants which have what appears to be boxers peeking out from the top of the waistband. The pants, priced at $1,190 or Rp16.9 million, raise controversy among fashion and history experts.

A TikTok user posted a video on 2 September showing the pants at a store while the poster said, “This feels racist...they’ve woven the boxers inside the trouser.” There is a specific reason why the pants are considered problematic, especially by the Black American community.

Marquita Gammage, an associate professor of Africana Studies at California State University, told CNN that she found this to be disturbing as she sees it as an exploitation of Black culture by the luxury brand to secure “major profits”. Sagging pants are not only a style popularised by hip hop culture; they are also used as a marker that criminalises “Blacks, especially Black males as thugs and a threat to American society.”

Gammage concluded that the pants bear too much similarity with the style worn by American Black men that “resulted in the imprisonment and death of Black men." The style has been consequential for Black men, yet the luxury brand decided to commodify it. She sees the pants as an exploitative cultural appropriation by Balenciaga.

Anthony Childs’ case is the epitome of this sentiment. In 2019, Childs violated the sagging pants ordinance which was passed in Shreveport, Louisiana in 2007. As he ran, police noticed that the man had a gun and proceeded to fire eight shots; three of which hit Childs to the ground. The coronary revealed that he died of a self-inflicted gunshot. 

This tragedy outraged the people of the city. Since the passing of the law, Black men made up 96% of the 726 arrests for sagging. The law was protested and vetoed against in 2019 after the incident for targeting Black men.  A similar ordinance was repealed in Opa-Locka, Florida last year.

When questioned about the controversy, Balenciaga Chief Marketing Officer Ludivine Pont told CNN that, "In many of our collections, we combine different wardrobe pieces into a single garment, such as denim jeans layered over tracksuit pants, cargo shorts merged with jeans and button-up shirts layered over t-shirts." According to her, the sweatpants are a product of that vision.