Is the apocalypse still relevant today? This is a question that Balenciaga, the fashion label of stylish dystopia, must slowly face up to. There is, of course, no question that Demna Gvasalia, who has been at the helm of the Parisian fashion house for nine years, is the master of expressing social commentary through fashion. Digitalization, memeification, war, climate change, the obsession with beauty – not a show goes by without him holding up a mirror to his audience in an incredibly ironic and clever way. He had Kanye West and various supermodels stomping through deep mud – a metaphor for »digging for the truth and being down to earth.« He flooded a catwalk. Following Russia’s attack on Ukraine, he moved the front row to tears with a snowstorm against which models – refugees – wearing rags and supermarket bags had to brace themselves. Admittedly, the rags were then available to buy for a few thousand euros, and the bags were made of leather. Regardless of the theme, the models have always been a mix of the beautiful and tough, clubbing types, and the silhouettes absurd: huge hoodies, super-wide shoulders. And, of course, there are the ever-present villain sunglasses: sometimes they’re futuristic, sometimes a combination of Oakley nerd and The Matrix. It doesn’t matter, as long as they go against the prevailing beauty tide.
Things could have gone on like this forever, but then came an advertising campaign in which children were pictured holding teddies in BDSM leather outfits, and the accessories were placed on documents from a US Supreme Court case which, heavily paraphrased, was about the right to child pornography. Half-hearted excuses followed, and the official round of mea culpas came far too late, which is why Balenciaga’s owner realized the only way out was to sue the creative director responsible for the campaign.
Balenciaga, the coolest, most intellectual, wackiest luxury label to date, was actually at risk of being canceled! Sales fell. Since then, Balenciaga has been, shall we say, driving at half throttle, with Demna Gvasalia reportedly stripped of much of his creative freedom. In a new advertising campaign, Kim Kardashian stands in a walk-in closet with a few dozen Balenciaga bags in the background, babbling irrelevancies. It isn’t the first time Balenciaga has worked with Kim Kardashian; a few years ago, she even walked the runway at a show. Back then, it was still somehow seen as subversive to honor the trash queen of capitalism. Now, the Kardashians appear in every other fashion show. These days, it is what it is: cheap marketing. The apocalypse that Balenciaga predicted like a mantra has long since arrived, at least in terms of creative output.
Mind you, no one ever walks around like that today, other than a few raver kids who have recreated the look – or invented it. With Balenciaga, you never know which came first, the chicken or the egg. And where do you see Balenciaga being worn? In European Eurotrash destinations as absurdly expensive sneakers on the feet of oligarchs’ wives, who, in a mindless obsession with status, accessorize them with their Chanel bags. This was the direction the last pre-collection show in Los Angeles took, presented against the backdrop of the Hollywood sign. Cartoon-like chunky sneakers and sheepskin boots with pajama pants, leggings with to-go cups in hand: it was a mockery of the iconic Hollywood lifestyle, only with a hint more darkness. As always, Gvasalia insisted that none of it was ironic, but rather a tribute to the culture that inspired him when he was growing up in post-Soviet Georgia. It’s always along those lines. He says it’s solely about the craft, not about marketing or controversy. But at the end of the day, a Balenciaga show is just that: a doomsday scenario with the greatest possible social media impact.
But Gvasalia did not invent this runway vibe. The fashion industry has long been into survivalism, a yearning for death, and political commentary. Diesel addressed the climate catastrophe in 2007. Indie label Acronym thrives on utility pieces that any prepper would love, and ultimately even the mainstream brand Stone Island. The entire so-called luxury industry, which is constantly getting bigger and more fast-paced, is often accused of dredging up the past too often. Sixties, seventies, eighties, and repeat; but, of course, that’s not true. The so-called Y2K looks of today (that is, looks inspired by the noughties) are very different now from what they were back then. One of fashion’s tasks is to drag the past into the present and use it to create a new future.
Take the great Martin Margiela. His breakthrough came in 1989 at a derelict playground in Paris’s 19th arrondissement. Instead of Anna Wintour, the front row was occupied by neighborhood children. Old clothes were taken apart and put back together to make new ones. Suddenly, oversized silhouettes that looked as if the wearer had had to rummage through a thrift shop were supplanting the superficial glitziness of previous fashions. To this day, a top that was nothing more than an actual supermarket plastic bag remains legendary. In other words, he took something old, used it to electrify the present, and paved the way for everything that came after it: yes, what we’re wearing today.
But what the hell is it that Balenciaga actually wants?
Disaster looks are just empty husks now. And it’s not even Demna Gvasalia’s fault. The house he works for belongs to one of the two big, luxury monopolies, Kering. So, the questions he asks can never seriously be answered by the public. For his last show in Paris, instead of fancy invitations, he sent out eight hundred inexpensive objects that he had painstakingly bought on eBay. People received a napkin, a candle holder, an old CD. The task this time was to consider: What defines luxury, if not the price? Is it the gesture behind the object, the devotion to it? Is it the object’s story? But before you have time to think about any of this, the first product prices pop up on the Balenciaga website, and you find you can purchase weltschmerz for anything from a few hundred to thousands of euros: for example, a hoodie with the ha-ha inscription «No Logo» in large lettering. It is what it is: the utterly ridiculous pursuit of status, which Martin Margiela made intellectual mush of, is, quite simply, Balenciaga’s daily bread in 2024.
So, quo vadis, Balenciaga? Perhaps, after all, it is worth remembering one’s roots. Cristóbal Balenciaga, the undisputed king of haute couture, created the most coveted dresses in the world in the 1960s. No, he did not liberate women from their constraints as Coco Chanel did, nor did he celebrate the post-war years with a New Look as Dior did. He tailored sculptural forms. They made his devotees look not only beautiful but, more importantly, somehow interesting. They were such standalone pieces that, to this day, they are not tied to any particular era. Incidentally, when Cristóbal had nothing more to say in terms of fashion, he closed his fashion house of four hundred employees, leading them to, alongside the paying socialites, suffer nervous breakdowns. The master’s expressed wish was that the Balenciaga brand sink into oblivion along with him. Nicolas Ghesquière, who now works as creative director for Louis Vuitton, revived Balenciaga in the nineties and noughties. The brand’s current cult status stems from this period – perhaps because he too was only interested in the product. Anyone who still owns a jacket from the Ghesquière era knows that Balenciaga feeling. It fits like a glove. It just makes you feel incredibly happy.
There are not many items of clothing you can say that of today. But perhaps too much is demanded of fashion these days. Maybe it’s not the case that it needs to open new worlds for us. And perhaps it should leave politics well alone. At Dior, for example, you can see what happens when a message is plastered across everything ad nauseam. The designer Maria Grazia Chiuri made feminism her motif; the resulting clothes have become more and more interchangeable, the message having all the impact you’d expect of a hackneyed phrase.
But fashion, of course, mirrors society, and thinking about the end of the world is kind of romantic. It shows that you’re not completely numb just yet, that you’re not totally indifferent to everything. Don’t we all think about the end of the world all day long? Maybe because it boosts our image of ourselves. After all, being someone who is there at the end at least makes you a bit more important in this sad, war-filled, rapidly warming world, where shameless people like the Kardashians are raking in profits. In that sense, hitting the apocalypse button looks like the easier option. And what’s the more difficult one? Simply being a tailor. Pierpaolo Piccioli at Valentino probably lost his job because of that focus. He has now been succeeded by Alessandro Michele, who turned Gucci into Gaga-land a few years back. So, perhaps well-made clothes are not enough either. Maybe one really does need to look to the future. In the sixties, Courrèges, Cardin, et al. – the fashion designers of the space age – did just that, but it was the opposite of dystopia. With insistent optimism, they created a good-humored utopia of silver miniskirts and spacey helmets. None of it came to pass, which is a shame. But visions are not predictions; instead, they are fantasies, forms of escapism. Perhaps realism has brought not only Balenciaga but all of us this close to the apocalypse. It’s high time, at any rate, that it went out of fashion.
