Remember Joan Collins? Remember Linda Evans? Remember a catfight in a fountain with shoulder pads so big they displaced half the water as soon as the ladies rolled in? Demna Gvaslia does. Actually he probably doesn’t, but the boulder-shoulder silhouette he so emphatically proposed for his debut Balenciaga menswear collection put us in mind of Dynasty’s finest. That wasn’t the intention – rather it was to explore the silhouette, to expand it, and our minds. And it was all based on Cristobal Balenciaga’s own clobber, which he obviously made for himself. Alongside the large, there was the little: shrunken suits pulled in super-tight and snug to crunch the ribcage, like bandages, or a Kardashian waist-trainer. There were even wide belts inspired by weight-lifting gear, to further define the silhouette. And a silhouette, Gvasalia said, is to the Balenciaga man what a couture “attitude” was to the Balenciaga woman. Did we mention the Vatican silks used to make the end of the collection, when it all got super formal and polished? If we get to meet the pope, we wouldn’t wear anything else. Make our Cardinal Red.
