Balenciaga Pre-Fall 2017 Review

     In less than a year, Demna Gvsalia has been able to redefine the Balenciaga trademarks for this age. This Pre-Fall collection solidifies those trademarks by making them last more than one season in this display of mismatching. Rather than throwing out all previous ideas every season and starting from scratch, Balenciaga is now building off of what items are best noticed and what is selling. The glove-like pointy heeled boots, the shapely suiting, ecclesiastical fabrics, bold, two-tone color combinations, and oversized and repurposed leather bags in strange shapes have been seen before and are being seen here. The fetishistic and skin tight-ness of everything tagged with billowing pants that look too long and fall over the twisted kitten heels. Fetish, modernity, architecture, and coldness are all building blocks of understanding the Balenciaga woman. It will be interesting going forward in Balenciaga's ready-to-wear collections, to see whether these themes will continue. Will Gvsalia choose to change everything for Spring/Summer 2018? Or, has he established the codes for the time being and just choose to continue with the things that sell for the rest of his tenure at the house? 

Balenciaga Fall/Winter 2017 Ready-to-Wear Review

     Demna Gvasalia's been at Balenciaga for more than a year now, and this latest collection for Fall/Winter 2017 combined codes of the house and modern twists into something relevant.  Because fashion is certainly a reflection of our times, rather than something that is just decorative, it must be understood that this Balenciaga show in context provides us with a way at looking at fashion and dressing that is relevant to today and next season, integrated with the world. Luxury and glamour must serve a purpose in the world we live in. Today, that world is technology obsessed, thus the fashion should integrate technological advancements to benefit the wearer. Gvasalia took that idea and made it more abstract: warping technical fabrics with couture fabrics for the modern woman. There were motifs of the automobile industry, with car interior mats as skirts and belts, broken rear-view mirrors as clutches, and flags wrapped around the "knife" heels models strutted down in. High fashion today is definitely made the same way cars are manufactured. Mass production and lack of laboratory experimentation dominate both industries.  Tweed, high shoulder skirt suits, and men's shirting played the major role. Then came the brilliant twisting of coat fastenings, skirt constructions, and thick belting. Suiting gave into hyper floral fabric dresses in velvet, and variations of street-ready pieces mixed with couture like fabrics and embroideries. In fact, back when Cristóbal Balenciaga was designing, he was celebrated for creating haute couture that wasn't stuffy, but absolutely incredible and modern, using the highest quality fabrics he could get his hands on. For this show, Gvasalia put his viewers in a massive industrial space, several times larger than needed for a runway. For the last nine looks, actual haute couture pieces reinterpreted by the current team paired with modern bags, sunglasses, and nylon boots paid tribute to the brand's 100 year anniversary. Those "Bazar Shopper" bags came in coordination with the evening wear in an ironic and modern twist. The idea was that because the Balenciaga woman is so busy being modern, she has to carry her life in a bag that weighs twice as she does around with her to galas and ceremonies. Though it would be fabulous to see these bags on the red carpet, the daring combination of gown and tote may only present itself in the editorial pages of a fashion magazine.

Balenciaga Spring/Summer 2017 Menswear Review

     Demna Gvasalia was digging through the Balenciaga archives when he found the thing that first inspired this first menswear runway presentation for the brand. It was an unfinished jacket made by Cristbál Balenciaga himself, missing a sleeve. The finished jacket was seen on the first look, a new chapter for the house of Balenciaga. It dwarfed the model, and was such a massive square proportion you instantly knew that it was both dated, but also something very forward for fashion overall. Massive boxy jackets matched with fitted shorts and knee high leather heeled boots. This was the general silhouette until the suits suddenly shrunk and caved in to the torso and the shorts became shrunken trousers. The contrasting oversized jackets and shrunken suits translated into much more casual military jackets, with "BALENCIAGA" baseball caps and giant yellow and blue leather bags, like those used at IKEA. How people actually wear clothes in the streets. Ecclesiastical lace then began to peak out from under coats like aprons, and began a theme of priesthood in all black and swirling embroidery on scarfs like priest stoles and buttoned up black jackets like uniforms. Ministerial purple embroidery on a vest so shrunken it appeared like a corset on one model and a red variant hit the ecclesiastical theme home. Demna Gvasalia has truly changed Balenciaga already with this first menswear runway in the brand's history, and challenged menswear and what men actually wear in a luxury way.

Balenciaga Pre-Fall 2016 Review

      Lurking in coat check rooms, this recently released Balenciaga collection was something edgy, fantastic, and new with original color palates and classic silhouettes on new technical materials. At first within this look book, you see a neon yellow dress and knit hat mixed with black leather stiletto boots and a black and white lettered stole in the likeliness of the "Balenciaga" label sewn into the clothes. It is status draped right around the shoulders. Fantastic hybrids of space aged fashion of the 1960s mixed with modern eclecticism and rounded "cocoon" silhouettes Cristobal Balenciaga was made famous for made up this collection. Designed in between the departure of old creative director Alexander Wang and the arrival of new creative director Demna Gvasalia from Vetements, according to the press release. For a house full of history, Balenciaga manages to create interesting and modern imagery for a culture submerged in instant stimulation and increased public interest in fashion thanks to the internet. I believe that Demna Gvasalia did have something to do with this collection, in fact, rather than it just being the overall House of Balenciaga creating something in between creative directors. Hints at Gvasalia's handiwork can be seen the styling and shapes of the hoodies, suiting, and floral dresses that were similar in production of what was shown in the Fall 2016 show, the first in which Gvasalia has been in direct control of. The actual photography of this look book was artful and raw. Slightly blurry and some images having cut off images underneath them, as if it was all a film reel that's being cut and chosen haphazardly. The looks themselves, are not at all haphazard. They are perfectly stylized, and even though Demna Gvasalia's participation is subject to speculation and question, a good look towards the future of Balenciaga.