Balenciaga: Technically tricky couture inspired by the archive

By

Godfrey Deeny

Published
Jun 26, 2024

No couture house attempts as many technically audacious ideas as Balenciaga, whose couturier Demna unveiled aluminum foil dresses and silk scuba satin gowns on Wednesday in Paris.

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Staged inside the maison’s historic home on Avenue George V, the show marked the half-way point of the four-day Paris haute couture season.
 
Security was extremely tight to enter the show, with barely 200 guests, including Nicole Kidman, Naomi Watts, Selma Blair, Michelle Yeoh and Katie Perry, attired in distressed illusion boots, a sweeping Empress coat worn open – and no top or bra. 

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Inside, a lone female voice recounted a psychoanalytical session, as if the audience were collectively lying on a couch.
 
Before the cast circulated around a half dozen salons in a collection that varied from gargantuan assemblages to strictly sculpted gowns made in second skin leather, light neoprene, crushed metallics.
 
Designer Demna’s goal, a tribute to the “subculture dress codes” of the house. Focusing in particular on four key elements: ¾ lengths; profile or cocoon silhouettes; eccentric hardware and fabric innovation.

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As a result, sending out coats so large they looked way too heavy for much of the cast, who trudged around the salons. Or inflated sleeves that almost floated off oversized bomber jackets
 
While a fab group of insect masks, attached a few inches off models’ faces, were paired with grungy plaid shirts, or baseball jerseys or hand-painted heavy metal T-Shirts. Eccentric hardware indeed.

Other cast members were covered in oversized fedoras over which were draped handkerchiefs or huge pagoda hats. An ideal collection for an off-beat surrealist horror movie.
 
“Let’s bring this session. Gently to an end,” intoned the narrator to polite smiles.
 
Leading to a giant blue insect mask worn with a huge faux horsehair coat, and at the finale a huge cloud of tulle engulfing one woman. Made instead of nylon gazar, some 47 yards wrapped carefully around the model. Constructed without any stitches and destined to be worn only once. Talk about rarefied fashion.

 
Hyper deconstruction all the way. To the upside-down gent’s jacket that became a fab cocktail, followed by a rags to riches gown in red, black and rose recycled fabric scraps all tied together. Or Maria Carla Boscono in a gray sweatshirt that intertwined with an oversized black puffer coat. Though Demna’s most compelling look was a huge, faded denim jacket, one side cut like a John Chamberlin car crash sculpture.
 
“My role at Balenciaga is to explain to the whole world who exactly was Balenciaga and not just to fashion people. I do that through my research in the archives and learning myself how important Cristobal really was,” concluded the Georgian-born designer.