Just throw a runway show already. It's not that the Balenciaga showroom isn't amenably equipped for gawping at lookbook images and riffling through the rails. It is. And it's not that the house's spokesperson isn't comprehensively briefed, passionately engaged, or immune to disconcertion should a critic choose to sniff a buffalo-hide biker or stick his hand up the leg of the brand's inaugural male swimwear to check if it has an inside brief. It happily does, and she sincerely isn't—disconcerted, that is.
Balenciaga's chief mission may be in the crafting of luxurious derivations and century-appropriate upgrades of house-canonic silhouettes for women, but its menswear under Alexander Wang is toughly considered and highly conceptual, too. This collection, right down to the sweating concrete backdrop of these images or the zipper on swimmers than concealed a hidden small-change pocket, was meant to evoke the titanically crumbled grandeur of Niemeyer's Brasília and the Constructivist sharpness of Lygia Clark. That agenda—plus the fact that this is Balenciaga by Wang, for heck's sake—totally merits a show.
In the absence of one, that rail truffle threw up lots of sometimes portentous but always forensically conceived menswear whose ascetic severity belied its richness of fabrication. A multi-pocket, leather-trimmed Japanese cotton parka, in fact, featured precisely 18 receptacles, some overt and some hidden: According to its imperturbably charming leather-clad curator, their jumbled-ness was meant to evoke an urban landscape. Fair enough, that parka gave great functionality-as-expression. The "nubby" cotton-nylon tank top provided texture; the paper-thin leather track pants and jacket offered lightness; and the palm-frond shadow print—rather lovely—pointed to place. The python hinted at dangers that lurked beyond the tree line. A topcoat was a big deal because it included an internal vest-cut waistcoat—the hidden (yet functional) layer beneath. The accessories rocked, most of all a sterling silver backstage-pass wristband that was luxe-witty—how rare is that? A brushed brass neck-borne nécessaire was less playful, but gleamingly want-able in its hand-tooled tactility. It just seems a pity that Balenciaga does not present a ceremony at which its followers can adore while the rest consider.
