Welcome back to the world of Balenciaga. This time, we’re immersed in a giant mud bath, almost like a damp construction site or a music festival, the mineral-rich scent of which fills the air (turns out the set was the work of Spanish artist Santiago Sierra, with a scent of petrichor molecule designed by Sissel Toolas to evoke the smell of wet earth after rain). Mountains of wet mud line the walls, and I observe editors trying to avoid dirtying their leather boots as they make their way to the corporate office chairs that comprise our seating. The message this time? Being down to earth, literally. Ye opened the SS23 show in a hulkingly large cargo jacket with the word ‘SECURITY’ emblazoned across the chest, worn with leather biker pants and a Balenciaga-branded mouthguard wedged between his teeth. He looked like he might be clearing the way for people to follow.
And they did, one by one: Demna’s colourful cast of idiosyncratic individuals. Some were dads carrying their babies, others morning-after chemsexers in shrunken tracksuits, lycra-wrapped girls ready to dance or Y2K-loving teens in squiggly neon scarves and meme-y slogan tees. Many of them bore visible cuts and bruises. It made me wonder who they were, what they’ve been through to get here, and where on earth they’re going. But that’s beside the point. “I hate boxes and I hate labels and I hate being labelled and placed in a box,” Demna had written in the show notes placed on every seat. “Society, the internet, and the world in general loves doing that, because it feels safe this way … Individualism in fashion is downgraded to pseudotrends dictated by a post in stories of some celebrity of the moment.”
He continued to extol the importance of finding yourself, against all odds. “Every day becomes a battlefield to defend this unique identity. And the more you try to be yourself the more you get punched in your face.” So, this was a show about the price of individuality; of wearing stains and bruises as badges of pride, whether on your face or on your bag. But also, really, it’s about the delightful paradoxes of Demna’s far-reaching Balenciverse. Just a couple of months ago, he staged a very traditional salon show for his second Balenciaga haute couture collection, in which megawatt Hollywood stars and supermodels imperiously swept the cream carpets of 10 Avenue George V with their pristine ballgowns. How quickly things change! Those ballgowns wouldn’t last a minute in the mud, and the women wearing them likely wouldn’t dare let them. Demna seemed to be offering a counterpoint to those ideals of beauty: even if they were to be sullied with dirt, he’d only find them more beautiful. In fact, the show did close with gowns dragging through the mud. Out with the Cristobal, in with the modern-day Balenciaga!
“Thank god for couture, because then I can do stuff like this,” he explained after the show. “Before, I always had to walk a tightrope between the heritage and me. I feel so liberated by couture, because I can do that interpretation of the heritage, but this is more ‘me’.”
For most beyond the court of fashion, the idea of thousand-euro shoes traipsing through mud, or items like baby carriers or mouthguards costing the same as a car, is wildly offensive at a time when the cost of living is soaring and inflation is at an all-time high. Yet, what could so easily smack of Emperor’s New Clothes is just Demna doing what he does best: subverting the notion of what luxury is, and what it can look like. It directly engages with the theme of the season, where the strongest collections have tapped into what Bottega Veneta’s Matthieu Blazy termed “perverse banality”. Demna has long been on a mission to flip the perception of luxury fashion – ever since he sent out a DHL-branded T-shirt down a Paris catwalk way back when. But then, he was the guy behind Vetements. Now, he’s one of the industry’s thought leaders.
Perhaps the best thing about the Balenciaga aesthetic – and certainly the mindframe – is that you don’t need to buy it. You can recreate the look with clothes from charity shops, and drag them through a wet field if you really want to (one T-shirt even read: “FREE STYLING TIPS”). But if you do want to buy into it, what justifies the price is the way it’s made. The hoodies are perfectly oversized, with a pillowy weight to their cotton jersey; the fluoro puffers come with boxy shoulders and abbreviated waists; the beaten-up jeans and leather jackets are artfully slouchy and distressed. As for the muddied boots and trains of dresses – it’s all part of the look, a deliciously inverted status symbol. “It’s much more difficult to make something that looks dirty, than keep it clean,” Demna enthused. “We have, like, a whole department now that ages things and makes them dirty.”
He likened their work to the bruises, cuts and busted lips that the models were sporting. “This was makeup obviously, which took longer than making someone look pretty,” he added, before gesturing to what he was wearing: “And it’s the same story with this hoodie.” He has a point. On most catwalks, clothes look new, pristine and as if they might never be worn by anyone other than celebrities or influencers. There are enough cashmere turtlenecks and elegantly-stitched nappa leather bags for people to aspire to. Demna, on the other hand, sees beauty in the old, the dirty, and the unconventional. And he does it well – so well, in fact, that it requires an expert eye to decipher between genuine craftsmanship and intentional artifice. Just as with the design of his stores, what so easily resemble the contrived distressedness of a ye olde times Adventureland ride at Disneyland, is in fact achieved through a level of craftsmanship that takes the night of a blockbuster fashion house. The exposed wires and mud beneath the concrete floor of his stores are sometimes fake, sometimes real. The rips in denim and purposefully worn-down handles of bags, on the other hand, are all the result of carefully-considered design.
Irony and sincerity; couture ballgowns and mud-splatted boots. A reflection of how we all move through the world today, laughing at memes one second and witnessing the atrocities of war the next, Demna’s Balenciaga brings to mind what Chris Kraus wrote in Where Art Belongs about the defunct art collective Bernadette Corporation, that it “stated the obvious in all its complexity” — refusing to offer a transcendent answer to, or critique, of what they observed. Ultimately, it relies on you to make of it what you will. As Demna concluded his show notes: “Fashion is a visual art and all we need is for it to be seen through someone’s eyes … in its best case scenario [it] should not need a story to be sold to someone. You either like it or not.”
Credits
Images courtesy of Balenciaga