Balenciaga, A Decade Signed Demna

Balenciaga’s artistic director since 2015, Demna is leaving. On March 13, the Kering group, which owns the label, announced his departure to another star in its galaxy, Gucci. With his post-ironic aesthetic and radical sartorial language, the Georgian designer is leaving his mark on the brand. A look back, in pictures, at 10 years in 10 shows.

After 10 years, however, the brand is parting ways with its designer , who has left to take over the reins at Gucci, left without a leader following the departure of Sabato de Sarno in early February.

Thus, none of the guests at the Balenciaga show, presented on March 9 at Paris Fashion Week – four days before the announcement – suspected that this was Demna’s last collection. Ready-to-wear, at least, since the designer will still present haute couture in July. The ultimate provocation poured out in the form of tracksuits, this collection had provoked 
strong reactions on social networks , questioning the renewal of which the designer would still be capable in the future. This will ultimately not be necessary.

Balenciaga’s Demna era

Throughout the seasons that punctuated his mandate within the brand founded in 1917, Demna imposed his vision. Political as much as controversial , he managed to make certain silhouettes look designer, as if Balenciaga had become an adjective. Upon his arrival, in October 2015, he applied himself to working the volumes of the hips and to twisting the proportions. In 2017, he paraded immense tote bags, inspired by those of Tati or Ikea, enthroning his future inclination to sell expensive what does not seem so.

Inexhaustible with ideas, with little regard for sketches, he introduced, for example, the Triple S, a sneaker that became a global phenomenon, that year. Little by little, all at once, Demna made his mark, awaited by fans from the moment his first show came out. To the point of joining the most meticulous official calendar. In July 2021, the Georgian designer presented his first version of haute couture for fall-winter 2021, and the first haute couture collection for the brand since 1968. He placed, in the tradition , small numbered cards next to the silhouettes, more classic than one might have thought.

And then everything comes together, the snowy or muddy catwalk sets as a metaphor for the exile he experienced as a child to escape the civil war, those under the palm trees of Los Angeles as a satire of the wildlife that walks around him in yoga pants, the accessories that make the headlines, from bags made of crisps to towel skirts , the scandals, the sports collaborations, the desired bags, the unexpected muses, the armor dresses, the iPhone campaigns, the raglan sleeves, the high technology, the crazy shoes, the triple down jackets. Having come to an end, the Demna era of Balenciaga is ending, not sure that its resonance will be as much.