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Paris Fashion Week winter 2024: at Balenciaga, will the garment save Demna?

2023-03-05T20:12:01.005Z


If the scandal that marred the name of this great fashion house before Christmas has escaped no one, this first show since the crisis puts clothing and fashion back in the foreground.


We will not repeat here the controversy that ignited the house of Balenciaga in November, following two advertising campaigns that earned it the crosshairs of QAnon, the far-right conspiratorial movement from the United States.

Admittedly, the episode and especially its crisis communication showed a rather astonishing business dysfunction at this level of luxury, as well as the limit of its somewhat

borderline

marketing that many consider to be provocation.

But isn't it time to move on?

This is what the label hopes for with this new collection which should put fashion back at the centre, at least in Europe.

The Kering brand, on the grill, did not skimp on the slightly contrite staging of this parade, the address of which was revealed at the last moment.

Finally, it will therefore be at the Carrousel du Louvre, overcrowded on this Sunday morning by tourists who wonder where these strange people are heading, creatures all in the Balenciaga logo and journalists in dark glasses who overplay the solemnity.

“The room is a white box, well more like the off-white canvas of the workshops' patronage,”

describes Demna, who, for the first time, met a dozen journalists over the previous two days.

“After the parade in September in the mud which followed the parade in the snow in March, where, finally, people no longer even saw the collection, I realized that I was betraying myself.

Because even if I discovered that I loved designing the scenography of shows, my job is

dressmaker

, clothes maker.

The crisis has confirmed that collections are the priority… My goal in life has never been to become the global provocateur and have people imagine me saying to myself in the morning: “Here, I'm going to press the red button on the provocation."

No, me, when I get up, I tell myself that I am going to make a great jacket so that the person who buys it will still wear it in ten years.

It was in the darkest times, last December, that Demna began to cut, pin, build and deconstruct dozens of vintage pants he had at home to make other pants, jackets, dresses .

This acute sense of design and cut, of a classicism à la Demna, can be read immediately in front of the first looks of the show.

The pants have four legs, and their waist becomes the hem of the jacket.

From the front, we can believe in a very simple costume;

in profile, it is more than inhabited!

What does the designer's shrink say about these redemptive pants?

He smiles.

“Can you imagine that he asked me the question and that I did not know what to answer him.

I ended up calling my mom and she reminded me that when I was 6 I absolutely wanted suit pants with wide turn-ups like in the movie.

Once upon a time in America

.

As it didn't exist in my size in the trade, she bought me some fabric and I went to a neighbor who knew how to sew and I tried it on.

I remember I was intrigued that he measured the body and had to think in volumes.

Symbolically, with this collection, I destroyed the first piece of clothing I ever “made” to recreate something new.”

Overcome the crisis

No logo appears in this locker room, but Demna's touch is there.

If the brand needs to be more consensual to overcome the crisis, the artistic director does not betray his aesthetic either, and that's good.

Thus the kinds of biker or rider corsets supposed to protect the organs are inflated like the famous Cocoon backs and profiled in hourglass (references to lines of Cristobal Balenciaga), drawing a quickdraw of a giant hunched over for the boys on the

runway

.

We always come back to the eternal question of the body and clothing (

“Body meets dress”,

as Rei Kawakubo said).

On his feet, sci-fi biker boots that he had already shown -

“but I had such a hard time creating the perfect boot!

And I don't know why we would have to reinvent everything every season.

Another sublime tribute to Cristobal, the round shoulder, which the couturier had developed in the 1960s. Demna places them on the front of the bust to give this slightly curved posture of haute couture models.

But on a pleated dress in water-green technical silk with delicate flowers, a blond herringbone faux fur or an evening bathrobe embroidered with black sequins, they portray a proud, contemporary and honest look.

Source: lefigaro

All news articles on 2023-03-05

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