Demna Gvasalia’s Buzzy Debut for Balenciaga

“If Dior is the Watteau of dressmaking…then Balenciaga is fashion’s Picasso. For like that painter…underneath all of his experiments with modern, Balenciaga has a deep respect for tradition and pure classic line,” Cecil Beaton once said of the legendary designer. While having a deep respect for tradition might not exactly be true of Balenciaga’s latest creative director, Demna Gvasalia, he certainly is a cultural disrupter attempting to move fashion forward in a way that might be slightly uncomfortable to those who prefer classic ideas about beauty and dressing. This is a man who showed a collection complete with expletives and pentagram iconography in a church for his own collection for Vetements, after all.

There were many ideas about wardrobe staples like the trench, the floral dress, the dress shirt, and the suit that Gvasalia has already introduced in his collections for Vetements. The idea behind it all is that Gvasalia is attempting to take the ordinary and reinvent it into extraordinary all the while dressing women the way he envisions the modern woman wants to dress. But does the modern day Balenciaga woman really want to wear dresses and suits constructed in such a way that the fabric puffs outward in a bubble at the waistline? Does she want to wear candy cane leggings paired with swaths of floral fabric? The reinvention of the normcore parka into structured off-the-shoulder coats was cool, but the look won’t be keeping anyone warm, and while those giant striped leather versions of supermarket bags will certainly make their rounds in the world’s fashion capitals, it’s hard to imagine legions of chic women lugging these around day to day. There were some definitely wearable pieces like leather trench coats, a purple sequined floral shift, and strapless evening dresses worn with slouchy boots…but it remains to be seen whether the Gvasalia fever will translate beyond fashion’s elite into real retail gold.