Luxury house Balenciaga shares its Winter 2022 campaign with Kim Kardashian making a major impression as the lady in a blue dress, joined by Euphoria actor Alexa Demie, rapper Big Matthew and model Khadim Sock for Demna’s winter collection.

Photographer and director Daniel Roché [IG] captued the campaign images for a fashion show dedicated to climate change and also the war in Ukraine. Demna became a child refugee at age 10, fleeing Abkhazia, Georgia in 1993.

Odesa, the beautiful city in southern Ukraine, was Demna’s displaced family’s first place of refuge. Yesterday, Ukraine sought UNESCO cultural protection for Odessa. “Russian forces have advanced to within several dozen kilometres (miles) of the city, which blossomed after empress Catherine the Great decreed in the late 18th century that it would be Russia's modern gateway to the Black Sea.” See also the NYT August article Odesa Is Defiant. It’s Also Putin’s Ultimate Target .

Young dancers in Odesa, Ukraine by Laetitia Vancon for the New York Times.

AOC can be so obtuse. Of course I know the shade of blue so important in the colors of Ukraine. It’s only seeing photographer Laetitia Vancon’s [see website] images of defiant dancers in Odesa for the Times, that I had an epiphany around Kim Kardashian’s blue Balenciaga dress. Laetitia’s images in the Times are show-stopping imo.

I believe they are for sale via Laetitia Vancon’s IG, and I will DM her and suggest that she at least alert Demna that they exist and also ask about purchasing the images. The Times may hold the copyright, but she will know that answer.

About the Garbage Bags

AOC knows that Demna and Ye are very close, but having been so involved with African refugees myself, there is something very disheartening about the plight of homeless people in LA being Ye’s so-called inspiration for selling Yeezy Gap made by Balenciaga out of garbage bags.

And then Ye has not made good at all on his big-time Trumpian promises to help these homeless people in LA. AOC gets riled up over these tactics.

Until now, I likened Kanye’s garbage bags to the garbage pickers of toxic waste in the Gulf of Ginea. They live and support their families, combing through the toxic electronic waste of Americans and Europeans — earning a bit of money at the expense of their own helath.

The Wokes call this environmental racism and so do I. And I detest Ye selling his clothes to modern-day, fashion must-have rag pickers. For me, it mocks desperate people just trying to exist, and I refuse to make an inspiring Hallmark card out of their suffering.

But reflecting on Demna’s Winter 2022 campaign and refugees on the road, fleeing civil wars with a few possessions in garbage bags or the more familiar cloth container on a stick, I understand better their place in the Balenciaga Fall 2022 collection.

Not that AOC was ever offended with the Balenciaga bags. I knew their design heritage but hadn’t taken the time to reflect about the show and all that it meant, as I did just now.

A significant number of fashion’s top models also understand and have lived this journey out of total physical and psychological, civil war peril, particularly in South Sudan. As supermodel Adut Akech has said “I will always be a refugee.”