Balenciaga has broken their silence on a controversial campaign with children that went viral this past week, and resulted in so much backlash that they deleted every single post on their Instagram account.

The luxury fashion brand, which has a market cap of about 70 BILLION, posted children with bondage gear teddy bears and had an easter egg supreme court document about child pornography. Get a load of the (since-deleted) images below:

It’s weird enough running a campaign where children are holding teddy bears in sex clothes, but to include a poorly-hidden court document about ‘virtual child porn’ in the same campaign? What could possibly be the reason for that? FYI, the case mentioned is Ashcroft v Free Speech Coalition:

Now I’m not usually too much of a conspiracy guy, but f-cking hell. There’s something seriously disturbing going on here. For their part, Balenciaga released an apology earlier today in which they appear to blame an outside party who they hired to create the campaign:

No word yet from the celebrities who endorse and advertise for Balenciaga, including Kim Kardashian. I’d bet her agent is freaking out a little bit though. Good thing there are eagled-eyed people out there who pick up on this sort on this stuff and call it out publicly. I guess we’ll have to wait and see what “the parties responsible for creating the set” have to say for themselves.

Meanwhile, check out Balenciaga’s new $1,800 crisp packet bags. Full of bright ideas, aren’t they?