The Balenciaga couture show opened with a meditation and ended with a storm cloud — one designed to disappear. That’s either a statement of faith in the future or a lot of hot air. Maybe both.
In place of the usual finale wedding gown, Demna, the brand’s mononymous designer, offered up 47 meters (155 feet) of the kind of black nylon normally used inside ball gowns wound round and round the model’s head and body like mist, with neither seams nor fastenings.
“Thirty minutes before the show, the dress didn’t exist,” Demna said backstage. After the show, it wouldn’t either. When you are talking about couture, where the hours of handwork that go into a piece contribute to what is often an outrageous price, and the result is meant to last forever, that’s blasphemy of the highest kind.
It’s also the next step in Demna’s quest to upend the hierarchy of value — what is precious, what is elegant, what is worth keeping (why you keep it) — and challenge the luxury status quo.
Before the disappearing dress, for example, there was a white evening gown made from old plastic bags that had been melted to create a sort of shiny dégradé effect, and one made of gold foil, scrunched around the body. Before those there were classic Balenciaga columns for society swans pieced together from strips of upcycled sweatshirts and soccer jerseys. And before that there were oversize concert Tees and sweatshirts that were actually hand-painted oils by the artist Abdelhak Benallou, featuring images of members of the Balenciaga atelier as a heavy metal band and lined — like the denim jackets — in thick Italian scuba satin to preserve their cocooning volumes.
