The setup at Bally’s new HQ on Via Piave—in the space where we watched Frida Giannini’s last show at Gucci, and Alessandro Michele’s unheralded, purportedly prepared-in-two-days first—reminded me of my last Airbnb in New York City, on Canal Street above a Korean beauty place. There was a pair of Bally sport socks left on the laundry basket next to the seen-better-days porcelain sink. The kitchen was a mess of empty wine bottles and glasses. Someone had left a handbag on the radiator and a set of bongos below it. There was a guitar on the sofa and a hairdryer on the tea crate alongside it. Basically, it was a slacker’s paradise.
The clothes that hung on railings here and there within the mise-en-scène at today’s Bally show would have been a fine wardrobe to inhabit my Canal Street crash pad: Teddy bear shearlings and retro cashmere-blend tracksuits in brown. Some fine jacquard topcoats with big shaggy collars. Some leather sport shorts. A suite of vintage reissued and tweaked heritage Bally trainers, which were gorgeous but also close to their cousin the Dunlop Volley (Best. Sneaker. Ever.), Spring Courts, and Reeboks. Bally’s last creative director, Pablo Coppola, departed in January, but the team he built—called the “Bally Collective”—is continuing his Wes Andersonian legacy in fine enough style.
