“I wanted to make couture relevant. Not in a palace, not here in this salon, but in real life.” That was the opening statement, backstage, to Demna’s closing statement at Balenciaga, his fifth haute couture collection and his final showing for the house. And it’s why the house’s lookbook was shot on the streets of Paris, rather than the stale air of a maison de couture. Demna’s out the building too, of course – and left with rigor, with grace and with a wry sense of irony and humour. The latter was present, to a degree, in the work of Cristóbal Balenciaga, but the former, not so much. That’s just one of the things Demna has injected into the house – he’s made streetwear, he’s twisted the couture literally upside-down and inside out, he’s revolutionised. He wasn’t going out quietly. “I kind of owed it to me and to Balenciaga,” he said. “It was time to move on to a new chapter.”
The new chapter is, of course, Gucci – today is Demna’s last day at Balenciaga. But this collection was no archival plunge, no greatest hits parade. There were echoes of Balenciaga past – both his, and Cristóbal’s. A suit was recreated from the 1967 collection, worn then and now by an original mannequin, Danielle Slavik. And Kim Kardashian once again walked in this show, reprising her turn from Demna’s 2022 haute couture. She wore earrings once owned by Elizabeth Taylor – an original Balenciaga client (she wore a gold saree gown by the house in 1964). Also, incidentally, one who received criticism for her level of fame, her extravagance, her appearance, and all the other stuff heaped on Kardashian. Give the girl a break.
That was, Demna said, part of the inspiration behind this show. “I wanted some kind of glamorous old Hollywood, that’s very rare now,” he said. “That I’m always inspired by.” So there were ‘Monroe’ sequin dresses, fluffed debutante gowns in filmy organza (“The lightest fabric that exists – something melting off the body”). But otherwise, it was an investigation of the purest roots of Balenciaga in tailoring. “Very couture elements,” he said. “And how to make tailoring relevant.” The result? To focus on the body, in both reiterations of Demna’s sculpted hourglass shapes (this time with a new lightness, “corseting you can actually breathe in”), and by fitting tailored men’s suits to buffed-out bodybuilders. Those, at first glance, you mistook for a Kardashian security cadre – but then their jackets appeared on other models, Demna’s more typical waifs and strays, in a twist on his signature oversized suiting. “I wanted to underline that it’s not the garment that decides the silhouette, it’s the body,” he said. Which is very, very couture.
It’s also very Demna, rather than very Balenciaga. Which wasn’t by chance. Demna referred to the heritage of Balenciaga as “claustrophobic”, which is understandable, after a decade. “I had to integrate a lot of Demna codes into this house – it’s a necessity,” he commented. This show, however, darted back and forth between the two, between reverence and a healthy disrespect, between archival echoes and stuff that, honestly, would make Cristóbal spin in his grave. Which is precisely the point: it isn’t 1968 anymore, when Balenciaga retired, declaring there was no one left to dress. There are people to dress, of course. But they dress differently.
That’s the thing about a heritage house – a storied legacy can become stifling; a weighty history can be crushing. Demna is passing the baton on to a new talent – Pierpaolo Piccioli, an admirer of Demna but a designer with an entirely singular aesthetic, too. I remember seeing him buying Balenciaga pieces when the house opened its “couture boutique” in 2022, and he was sat in the salon watching this swansong. He stood up in the sweeping standing ovation when Demna – for the first time in his career – came out to acknowledge the audience’s applause. That was right after the exit of the artist Eliza Douglas – Demna’s first model at his first ever Balenciaga show, and here his last.
“Thank you all for following my work for a decade,” Demna said backstage. He’s ready for the next chapter now.
