Life becomes theater in Balenciaga's SS24

In the world of fashion, there are designers, and then there are visionaries. Demna Gvasalia, the creative mind behind Balenciaga, unquestionably falls into the latter category. With each collection he presents, he doesn't simply offer garments; he creates experiences, and his latest SS24 show is no exception. It's a tribute to the art of crafting garments as personal expressions of identity and community – but above all, it's a sort of liberating visual diary of Demna. In addition to including his loved ones in the cast (his mother opened the show, his husband Loïk Gomez closed it, and there were professors from the Antwerp Academy, personal muses, makeup directors, museum curators, the brand's PR director, critic Cathy Horyn, and so on), he made the show a showcase of all his style elements applied to outfits for every occasion, from the red carpet to the supermarket, including a recurring detail of a train ticket for the Paris-Geneva route, a detail that, according to Elias Medini, foreshadows Demna's upcoming departure from the role of creative director but could actually indicate the monthly journey that the Balenciaga team makes to Geneva, where the brand's design studio is located. Bringing friends, family, and colleagues onto the runway and spectacularizing them amid crimson theatrical curtains, Demna tells his own story and the aesthetic with which he breathed new life into Balenciaga, suggesting to the audience that this very aesthetic is the sum of the individual identities that make up the brand's closest community. He also adds an element of dreams by summoning his muses and even Amanda Lepore and Kim Kardashian (whose photo has been added in post as she was not at the physical show) to wear his evening gowns, evoking his satirical, dark, distorted vision of glamour and stardom. Even the soundtrack, as always, is signed by Loïk Gomez, with Isabelle Huppert's syncopated voice in the background reading an old tailoring manual with great and anxious excitement.

The first look immediately sets the tone, introducing Ella, Demna's mother, wearing a jacket composed of three different vintage jackets, deconstructed and reassembled in a way that artificially recreates the effect of a pile of clothes thrown in bulk - but perfectly wearable. Also for jackets and coats, of which there is an oversized, almost cartoonish series, a two-dimensional effect has been applied that flattens and straightens the shoulders, creating a very '80s power shoulder look (it reminded us of the iconic silhouette of The Babadook minus the top hat) but without using shoulder pads or other supports. In both cases, Demna's great topoi of the overlapping and doubled garment and that of the trompe-l'œil return. Another major chapter of her own language that is re-explored is the "deceptive normcore" of jogging suits, supermarket plastic bags, drawstring pants, robes and track jackets but also the travel bags artificially "folded" to look even more messy. 

Here one of the accessory-surprises are house keys that, transformed into decorative pendants, decorate destroyed bags à-la-Jane Birkin and even hair elastics while passports are actually wallets. Another interesting aspect is the upcycling that went beyond the recomposed jackets to be applied to evening gowns, to the final wedding dress resulting from the union of seven different wedding dresses, to the biker jacket composed of different panels like a mosaic. Once again the Margielesque taste for recovery and deconstruction and reconstruction of pre-existences returns. Other leather items are actually produced from a material created for the brand, LUNAFORMTM, derived from fermented nanocellulose. A beautiful allusion, however, were the flesh-colored tops covered in tattoos that mention one of Demna's signature garments, namely the Tattoo Print Shirt from Vetements' SS19.

Considering that the collection metaphorically revisits Demna's beloved places, his design solutions, his language, it seems like witnessing a resurgence of enthusiasm from the Georgian designer, a reopening of his world after the minimalist interlude and the well-behaved seasons spent away from the media frenzy. This return, or should we say, the reaffirmation of his own poetic and linguistic voice, was not only foreshadowed by the video interview with the designer that Cathy Horyn projected at the Triennale in Milan two weeks ago but also served as a necessary reminder of the importance of a structured and autonomous authorial voice in an fashion industry that seems to have been hijacked by marketing departments. At first glance, the collection may seem "very Demna," but in fact, it would perhaps be worth questioning ourselves as an audience and as critics about the perennial issue of repetitive designers, the division between continuity and creative fatigue. In this sense, Demna is a great magician, a tightrope walker between conceptual virtuosity and commercial innovation, the meeting point between conceptual genius and brilliant salesman - in some ways, the most lucid and shocking portrait of what fashion is today. During the last fashion month, it became clearer than ever what the true charm of designer fashion is compared to industrial fashion, created at the drawing board and regardless of any aesthetic direction. The common trait among all authors is the enthusiasm they can generate in the audience, the moment they can create. And Demna not only reminded us of that "moment" but also reclaimed it and told us it's all his.