Balenciaga Is Starting Over

As Christian Dior said, Cristóbal Balenciaga was “the master of us all.” Aged just 22 when he opened his first Haute Couture atelier, the Spanish designer’s vision and taste level transformed an archaic industry, and even more so when he opened Balenciaga in 1937 — a brand far from what you know it as today.

But after shutting its doors in 1968, Balenciaga was never the same. It went to the depths of fashion House hell by selling branded perfumes, and was later bought by German conglomerate Hoechste. Little else happened until Nicolas Ghesquière got hold of the reigns in 1997, marking the beginning of Balenciaga’s illustrious run of both bringing in and creating cult designers within its walls. Ghesquière’s tenure is without fail the most collectible of Balenciaga’s contemporary archive – with another headline-making stint from the controversial Alexander Wang’s stint as Creative Director from 2012-2015 – and today, we have Demna, continued to stir the creative pot at Balenciaga until it became charred and overcooked.

As you’re probably aware, Balenciaga and Demna’s controversy has had more twists, turns and revelations than an episode of Keeping Up With the Kardashians. Following on from Summer 2023’s “The Mud Show” – which opened with Ye, the rapper and fashion mogul whom Balenciaga has since departed ways from – came a slew of problematic campaigns that riled social media. From BDSM teddy bears to documents in the background of a separate campaign detailing the Supreme Court case ruling of United States v. Williams, which heightened federal protections against child pornography, the campaigns were, ultimately, of poor decision-making and even poorer taste.

Since setting the internet on fire, Balenciaga has made considerable attempts to show change. It and its parent company, Kering, partnered with the National Children’s Alliance, Demna spoke out in a tell-all Vogue interview, and through it all, products have continued to sell out. The latter is of particular poignance, because such furor for Balenciaga’s products is the Demna effect, arguably the sole reason why Balenciaga was the “hottest brand in the world” for three consecutive quarters between 2021 and 2022.

Demna cut his teeth at Antwerp’s Royal Academy of Fine Arts, the same institution that gave birth to the legendary “Antwerp Six” – Ann Demeulemeester, Marina Yee, Dries Van Noten, Dirk Bikkembergs, Dirk Van Saene and Walter Van Beirendonck – as well as Raf Simons. After graduating, Demna worked under his former teacher WvB, before moving to Margiela and then Marc Jacob’s Louis Vuitton. With little formal training, the small-town boy from Georgia had scaled a ferocious fashion design ladder, ascending from student to LV’s women’s ready-to-wear designer. By 2014, he founded Vetements with his brother Guram Gvasalia.

Vetements sprung onto the scene with enviable success. It hosted its first Paris Fashion Week runway show for Spring 2015, opening with Demna’s friend, muse, and collaborator Lotta Volkova (who still works with Demna as Balenciaga’s stylist), and went on to create cult items like the DHL T-shirt, hosted a show inside a McDonald’s restaurant, and dressed all of the most important celebrities at the time such as Ye, the Kardashians, Justin Bieber, and Rihanna.

Joining Balenciaga in 2015, Demna’s mission was to create a House steeped in a luxurious past re-dressed for today. Think adidas collaborations and Helly Hansen Haute Couture parka jackets presented alongside flamboyantly ornate jewelry, little black dresses inspired by Cristóbal’s designs, a selection of it-girl handbags, and a whole lot of viral moments.

As the House said itself, Demna’s Fall 2016 debut was “a new chapter… a reimagining of the work of Cristóbal Balenciaga – a wardrobe of absolute contemporaneity and realism imbued with the attitude of his haute couture.” For Demna’s first menswear collection, Spring 2017, he told Dazed that the designs were “a little wink to the idea of where the tailoring comes from, the perfection of tailoring that I wanted to break with this collection.” Indeed they were: the “Cristóbal Coat” was a sharp, boxy, elongated piece of outerwear that held a piece of paper in its chest pocket, a motif that nodded to the kind of notes Mr. Balenciaga would document when making his collections.

As the years passed, Demna’s Balenciaga grew into a behemoth trendsetter. It was no longer a brand; but rather an incubator of taste-making. The Triple S singlehandedly kickstarted the dad sneaker rage, logomania ran wild and gave way to iconic pieces like Balenciaga’s Bernie Sanders-inspired “Political Campaign” graphic, and more recently, the House has used Demna’s Georgian heritage and its cultural influence to be evocative and emotional, per the dramatic Winter 2022 runway show.

But where did it go wrong?