March 6, 2023 |
After the storm, the calm. In the wake of a backlash to its last two campaigns, Balenciaga was looking to get through fashion week sans controversy. It was time for a reset, one which leaned out of the fashion circus and into the quiet craft of making clothes. Demna said he’d been wanting to move away from mega shows on huge sound stages and reconnect with the hands on process of cutting, draping and making. The designer left a note on each seat recalling his own fashion origin story, when he had a suit tailored aged seven. The process of choosing the fabric and details set him on his path to becoming a designer.
Instead of the theatrics of elaborate sets Demna chose to show in the Carousel du Louvre, a specially built, underground show space that hosted the majority of Paris fashion week’s big names in the 1990s. It’s blandness was it’s eventual undoing, with brands migrating to more individual spaces. But for Balenciaga, mired in controversy bland was good. All the better to focus attention on the clothes.
Tailoring was key, with Demna fashioning pumped up shoulders and hourglass waists, atop teetering heels worn by men and women. The focus on tailoring was so intense that the only detail was yet more tailoring with trouser legs dandling off waistbands, which flapped and kicked as the models walked. The proportions were the same for women and men. Roomy coats, oversized macs lean tailored skirts perfect tuxedos. Demna introduced a new men’s jackets with inflatable bodices, taking on the silhouette of life preservers or hourglass corsets. He pumped up the shoulders of his signature cape-back floral dresses. The mood was severe elegance of the kind Mrs. Danvers would approve. The show ended with a series of floor length, beaded lace gowns their high, rounded shoulders based on an archival Balenciaga design. Seriously chic.
Photography courtesy of Balenciaga.
