Tabula rasa, we start again from the clothes. AND what has been perceived since the first release of the fall/winter 23-24 collection by Balenciagaan oversized black balzer accompanied by double trousers, and it is what he anticipated already last month worthy (creative director of the maison) a Vogue. “I went back to cutting jackets and trousers, experimenting with models and shapes. I can’t explain it in any other way than with the fact that I took refuge in the activity I love: creating clothes”, the Georgian designer had declared to the newspaper. And so it was: no extravagance, no political message, few accessories and nothing that could potentially be ‘over the top’ – in stark contrast to the deliberately provocative communication strategies implemented by the brand up until now.
A change of course strongly desired also by the owners, Dry, and necessary after the ‘media incident’ that has engulfed the brand since last November, when, following two advertising campaigns, the brand was accused of having created and disseminated child pornography. Incident, in addition, coming soon after the ‘case Kanye West‘, an artist also known for his closeness to the designer and who with his controversial statements had already overshadowed the brand (for which he had even walked the catwalk), without the creative director himself ever expressing himself on the matter. A media domino that in a few months has led to theremoval of the brand ambassador Kim Kardashianto Demna’s public apology – issued after a long press blackout – and caused several attempts to boycott the sales of the French fashion house via social media.
“Fashion has become a kind of entertainment, but often this part overshadows its essence, which resides in shapes and volumes, in silhouettes, in the way we create relationships between body and fabric, in the way we create shoulder and armhole, in the way clothes have the ability to change us,” wrote Demna in a statement left on the seats before the show. “For the last couple of months I’ve needed to seek refuge for my love affair with fashion and I instinctively found it in the process of creating the clothes. She reminded me again of her incredible power to make me feel happy and truly express myself. That’s why for me fashion can no longer be seen as entertainment, but rather as the art of making clothes”.
The change implemented was not only highlighted by the clothes, but also by the setting of the fashion show: austere, outlined by lights and white spaces and cleaned of any ‘mud’ of the last presentation, the spring/summer 2023 collection. A show which has strongly divided fashion criticism, between those who defined change as a duty, a necessary ‘mea culpa’, and between those who instead defined what was shown on the catwalk as the death of creativity, crushed under the media weight of society Contemporary. However, a fashion show that represents an important rehearsal stage for the maison. A test to demonstrate if you can really start again, as suggested by Demna himself, from a jacket, or if the creative direction of one of the most influential designers of recent years may instead have been compromised forever.
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