After employing P.R. Consulting for twelve years, Balenciaga has decided to take public relations in-house. They plan to hire a new U.S. PR person next week and are already setting up meetings with editors for next month. The label says the move is a “normal evolution.” P.R. Consulting head Pierre Rougier says, “It’s been really great and I really don’t want it to seem any other way.”
Sources tell WWD the split may not have been so amicable. The paper highlights two possible rumors about the breakup, both centered on infidelity:
1. Tensions arose when a Balenciaga designer left for another P.R. Consulting–represented label.
2. Balenciaga executives thought P.R. Consutling’s other clients were producing garments of suspicious similarity to Balenciaga designer Nicolas Ghesquière’s pieces.
When news broke that Balenciaga had banned Carine Roitfeld and French Vogue at fall 2010 Fashion Week, rumors of a similar vein surfaced. Some thought Carine loaned Max Mara a Balenciaga coat, which they allegedly ripped off. Some thought Ghesquière was upset over a staffing change at the magazine. But then nymag.com commenter RebeccaRose2004 pontificated, “My theory is that they discovered she is some sort of alien cyborg creature, planted here as part of a massive interstellar conspiracy to take over the fashion industry, so our soon-to-be alien overlords will dress cool and not look like dorks when they come to take us over.” Which is, as far as we know, an equally plausible theory for any of this.
