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The fashion-designer parents of a young girl who shocked art-lovers by climbing on a multi-million pound sculpture at Tate Modern today said their nine-year-old daughter was simply being “anti-establishment.”

Kait Bolongaro, 45, and Stuart Trevor, 47, who founded the All Saints label, said young Sissi Belle was just “seduced by a ladder of jewel-coloured shelving” when she was photographed crawling on the installation by American sculptor Donald Judd .

The Standard reported on Wednesday how the image vent viral after tourist Stephanie Theodore posted it on Twitter in a bid to name and shame the couple who she branded “horrible parents with horrible kids”.

Ms Bolongaro, whose father is an art collector, said of her daughters Sissi Belle and six-year-old Harper Bea: “There are some beautiful statues that they have climbed, the Henry Moore at Liverpool Street, ones along the South Bank where they are interactive and the Diana Memorial.

“It’s not right, but they were just interested. Their only crime was to be seduced by a ladder of jewel-coloured shelving. Sissi has always been anti-establishment but she would never hurt anybody.”

The couple, who now run the Bolongaro Trevor fashion label worn by the likes of Kings of Leon and Agyness Deyn after selling All Saints in 2005, brushed off the incident as a “simple faux pas” saying their daughters are “cute and intelligent girls at the top of their class”.

Ms Bolongaro said she had popped out to fetch the car leaving the children in the care of their aunt Lucy and uncle Frank at the end of a two-hour visit to the South Bank gallery on Sunday.

Mr Trevor said: “They had been talking about how wonderful the day had been and how much it had inspired them and one of them just slipped onto the shelf and their aunt wasn’t even aware. Then the woman [Ms Theodore] came over, who wasn’t even the boss, and very rudely said ‘do you know this is a $10million artwork?’

“Lucy then said ‘it’s none of your business, I will look after the children’ because she immediately asked her to get off.

“Our children have been to all the museums and all the galleries in London and abroad. They have been all around the world and are extremely intelligent and educated and just happened to slide in the bottom of what looks like a row of shelves.

“They were on it for a matter of seconds, they weren’t climbing all over it.

“Our children are not horrible, they are the most cute and intelligent girls at the top of their class in school and they are obsessed with art. They have the upmost respect.

“Does this woman want it so no parents bring children to art galleries? That would be horrendous.”

The couple, who have an older son Louie who models for their label, live near Victoria Park in Tower Hamlets, east London.

A Tate Modern spokesman said the situation was “dealt with immediately.”

The Untitled 1980 installation is seen as one of Judd’s best works and is estimated to be worth several million pounds.