A new couture-inspired line debuted at Balenciaga’s New York Stock Exchange.
Balenciaga creative director Demna has been hovering on top of the fashion world for almost eight years now. But how do we define his role? Is he fashion’s best comedian? When asked why he collaborated with Adidas for his Spring 2023 show, staged on Sunday in Manhattan, he said, “Well, I always wanted to use three stripes.” Ha! Or, with his pounding music and gimp-mask covered models, maybe he is fashion’s best horror director?
The only thing we can say for sure is that he is our most influential living fashion designer–so anthropological is his work that the whole world has looked like Balenciaga over the past few years, whether it’s the tourists on the street outside of the New York Stock Exchange, where the show was held, or the world’s wealthiest people, who always seem to have the worst clothes. He holds a mirror up to—well, not nature, but all that is highly synthetic and banal and overly familiar. Demna makes you feel seen, but in a bad way. That was the primal pleasure of his New York show.
This is the first time Demna has shown in America, though he noted backstage that Americans were some of the first to embrace his Balenciaga vision. A country never looks so pure as through the eyes of a foreigner, and Demna, who is Georgian and designs out of France but lives mostly in Switzerland, showed us Americans (especially New Yorkers) as he sees us: work obsessives with briefcases and blazers, CFOs in big black coats. His models tramped through the stock exchange like they owned the place, their precise power-hungry tailoring punctuated with enormous black clown shoes. Every model wore a bondage suit under their look. You know…because we’re slaves to capitalism
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