Tag: Balenciaga

#SuzyPod: A Balenciaga Couture Special

Posted on by Natasha

22nd July 2021 Demna Gvasalia, the Creative Director of Balenciaga, discusses his first Haute Couture collection for the house, and the revival of Balenciaga Haute Couture. 

Fifty-three years after the original Balenciaga salon was closed with Cristóbal Balenciaga’s final and 49th show, the company’s Haute Couture has now been revived for Autumn Winter 2021/22 with its 50th collection by Demna and hats by Philip Treacy.

The show was presented on Avenue George V in front of an audience of famous faces, including François-Henri Pinault of the Kering luxury group.

Demna with Suzy in Paris earlier this year

Demna spoke to me about his tough, unsettling early life; the start of his career, working in Antwerp, Belgium, with Martin Margiela; and then his introduction to high-level fashion at Louis Vuitton in Paris.

As if the exceptional story of Cristóbal Balenciaga were not enough, what about Demna Gvasalia’s development as a designer who started his life in war-torn Georgia and is now a highly creative force in Paris fashion today?

He and his brother Guram took a bold course by launching Vetements in 2014. An aggressively anti-high-fashion company, its ‘cheap’ bags and basic clothes emblazoned with the logos of pedestrian companies such as DHL, stunned the fashion world – not least when Demna joined Balenciaga the following year.

In my podcast, the designer discusses his play on the classic with the strange and elegant: massive sneakers worn with evening clothes or Philip Treacy‘s ‘mushroom’ hats. This is what makes Balenciaga unique among its fashion rivals, and makes the return of Haute Couture to a Parisian house all the more dramatic, especially when Christian Dior called Cristóbal “the Master of us all”.

At the age of 40, the designer has channelled his disturbing and ever-changing childhood into the calm of creativity. The idea of bringing back to life the haute couture of a historic brand has proved daring – and smart.

BALENCIAGA: SWEET AND SOUR “CLONES”

Posted on by Natasha

14 June 2021

Demna Gvasalia’s powerful collection for Balenciaga opened to a spooky version of Edith Piaf’s ballad, ‘La Vie en Rose’, as a soundtrack. When this song about finding love after trying times was first released at the end of the World War Two, it was adopted as an anthem for hope. Was this Demna’s metaphor for our post-lockdown landscape?

This second instalment of Balenciaga’s partnership with Gucci’s Creative Director Alessandro Michele for Spring/Summer 2022, ‘Clones’, was a virtual show in more ways than one. Not only was I watching it online, but I also noticed that hardly anyone in the ‘audience’ – all of whom were dressed top-to-toe in black – was taking pictures. That’s because the show was deep faked, with the same model wearing every outfit on a clinically white runway. 

An evening gown from the ‘Clones’ collection by Demna Gvasalia for Balenciaga, Spring/Summer 2022

“Technology creates alternative realities and identifies a world of digital clones,” the designer explained when asked about his premise. “Between unedited and altered, genuine and counterfeit, tangible and conceptual, fact and fiction, fake and deep fake.”

The clothes were real, however, and the mood was for pretty patterns but with a tangible sense of toughness. The collection was polished and focused, and seemed to bring Balenciaga back to its Spanish roots but replanted in Paris. It was based on fine cutting and the ability to present men’s and women’s style without a male/female divide.

There were references to last year’s collaboration with Gucci, with Gucci’s double-G monograms becoming double-Bs, and a focus on accessories, especially footwear and graffiti handbags.

The anger seems to have trickled out of the designer’s anarchic spirit, and is now replaced by strength – a vision perhaps best summed up as “sweet and sour”.