Putting it very simply, Demna just showed a collection consisting of all the Demna-isms that he established in just under a decade at Balenciaga. Straightforward, close-up presentation of clothes has been a feature of several shows in this ready-to-wear season—this was one. It’s part of fashion’s big reckoning with itself about what fashion is for, and who’s going to buy it—vexed questions swirling around the industry in these times of upheaval.
Demna called it: “a study of different ‘standard’ clothes,” meaning he’d designed a collection that methodically went through all the categories—and the characters—he has built as the known Balenciaga universe. Out came his scary men and women in corporate suits, his chic tailoring, his denim-and bombers streetwear, coded underground club and sportswear, his Cristobal couture-referenced eveningwear.
Debriefing in his fluent and subtle way backstage, he said that the presentation—plain and pared-back by his big-stage showman standards—was meant to focus on the “brainwork” and pattern cutting of fashion. “It’s easy to put a chair on the head and say, oh, that’s wearable art—or putting a parka upside down, (which) I kind of did for the last 12 years—and I love it, by the way—but also I felt like maybe I had enough of that.”
What we were looking at, he said, was “Demna 2.0”—wearing a suit—and renouncing the current state of excessive, performative fashion. “Costume is (a term) that I have a problem with a lot, because it doesn’t make me dream, to be honest. What makes me dream is the perfect suit that I can wear. That’s the hardest thing to do, and what I want professionally,” he said. “I don’t want another type of dream that I will never, you know, relate to. Do I really want to do something that is pretending to be fashion just because it grabs attention because of it? Or do I want someone to tell me, ‘this is the best coat I’ve been wearing for the last five years?’”
There were indeed some great looking tailored coats—noticeably narrowed in from the humungous shoulders Demna set as a fashion revolution over a decade ago at Vetements. Instead of gigantic trousers and monster trainers, there were sexily-cut pencil skirts, sheer black stockings, and high heeled pumps for women, strangely chiseled black leather shoes for men. Pulled-together chic—for a definitely more grown-up market—might be a better way to appeal to demographics who have money.
