Is it too early to say that online fashion weeks have been a fail—short on substance and significance? Balenciaga is in the enviable position of showing women’s and men’s together in the fall. If anyone can deliver the “mixed reality” experience of fashion’s future we’ve all been talking about during this crisis but have yet to see, it’s Demna Gvasalia, who has been innovating around immersive runway shows for a couple of years now. The latest was unforgettable, with the first two rows of seats in the amphitheater submerged underwater and scenes of climate apocalypse on the screens above. All eyes will be on him in October.
In the meantime, team Balenciaga came up with a clever, low-concept way to showcase the brand’s pre-spring collection, playing up the lack of IRL appointments by including in these photos all of the line sheet information an e-commerce buyer might glean in a showroom, virtual, or otherwise—all the way down to the garments’ and accessories’ material compositions and product IDs.
Gvasalia is quick to admit that Balenciaga’s pre-collections aren’t really about newness. The off-seasons are chances to elaborate on what he calls the house’s “archetypes,” pieces like oversized car coats and parkas; the swingy Vareuse dress; logo denim; tracksuits, hoodies, and tees, of course; and the funnily named pantashoes. This time around, the styling was done completely on-screen. “It was an experiment in showing you don’t always need the new,” Gvasalia says. “Fashion has become a race, running after novelty, and more and more. And here we did the opposite. We looked at what we have and asked what we can do with it so it looks different for the customer.” Sharp observers may notice what the designer calls the collection’s “humor” and glean the sense that it’s about “taking things easier and just chilling out a bit.” There are house slipper-style mules and thong sandals worn with matching socks.
“The theme,” he continues, “was dress for yourself. In this lockdown we understood what’s important for people who like fashion and like to dress up: You do it for yourself first and foremost. Working from home started with me wearing boxer shorts and pajama pants: very lazy. I thought, I don’t have to make an effort to make my look every morning, but then I started getting depressed. When I started to dress up every morning, it changed my whole mood, I started to feel good about myself. This is the task that fashion has,” Gvasalia concludes, “to bring this excitement or goodness to the person wearing it. That’s the least we can do.”
So back to October: After the fire and brimstone of his last show and its mostly black almost monastic clothes, Gvasalia says, “I can tell you one thing, my upcoming seasons are full of light, even though we’re still in this deep hole of horrible things. I believe through the work we do we can talk about this hope, the light at the end of the tunnel.”
