Balenciaga x Lays: a cultural clash

Balenciaga are currently trending for their collaboration with Lay’s potato chips, which sees a designer ‘bag’, in the style of Lays, selling for (reportedly) $1,800. Balenciaga’s audaciousness is hitting the headlines.

This is interesting Semiotically. The fact the merging of two cultural ‘signs’ (Balenciaga, Lays) can cause such controversy. ?So why is it so audacious?

Balenciaga vs. LAYS

Firstly, Balenciaga are a luxury fashion brand. Whilst high fashion always pushes creative boundaries, there are still baseline expectations - thoughtfully designed, carefully made, quality materials, durable.

LAYS on the other hand is FMCG (a fast-moving consumer good). It’s a packet of crisps. Affordable, consumed quickly (vs savored) and notoriously unhealthy. The heavily saturated colors on pack are suggestive of the strong, synthetic, mass-produced flavors. A quick, dirty, guilty pleasure. The opposite of a prized luxury piece cherished in our wardrobes.

Where luxury fashion is to actively collect and savor, FMCG is to passively consume.

The bag itself is the crisp packet bag – without its contents (the crisps). To the public eye, an empty crisp packet is litter. A waste product. Models appear as though they’re clutching rubbish rather than a handbag.

A clashing of classes

The merging of oppositions – high-brow luxury vs. low brow commodity, uncover uncomfortable class tensions. Lays crisps are accessible to all, but it’s not new news unhealthy foods skew toward lower socio-economic groups (lower education, higher calorie for lower price tag, etc). This contrasts with Balenciaga – accessible only to those who can afford the higher price tags.

We have a scenario where the rich become even more frivolous – ‘throwing away’ a significant amount of money for something seemingly so disposable. An insult to those struggling in today’s economic climate. We also have a scenario where Balenciaga could be perceived as tapping into the controversial ‘poverty chic’ trend, where the ‘rich intentionally try to look poor'.

There are other, more positive lenses we could see this through. Transforming 'trash' into art, in the aid of being more sustainable. Challenging our perceptions of disposable goods to see what they could be - elongating their life.

Or perhaps we're parodying the rich here, and the lengths they'll go for a 'designer' product.

Nevertheless, Balenciaga have a history in this space. From their trash bag handbag, which connotes ideas of homelessness, to their $2,145 IKEA replica. In today's economic climate, making a seemingly accessible product inaccessible to its core demographic, leave this feeling bad taste.

Disposable luxury

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen brands bringing together luxury and FMCG. Supreme for example partnered with Oreo to create a designer cookie. They reportedly sold for around $91,000 on eBay.

In a similar vein, the purpose of the cookie is to be consumed. Something seemingly so precious (‘stamped’ with the Supreme logo), reduced to the status of a commonplace biscuit. A perishable.

To analyse, these launches are fascinating as they challenge our perceptions of what we feel these brands 'should' be delivering. But as products themselves, are they bad taste? What do you think?