Balenciaga’s spring 2024 ready-to-wear collection was opened by creative director Demna’s own mother, Ella, his first style inspiration, wearing a coat made out of three repurposed vintage garments. His husband, Loïk Gomez, better known as BFRND, closed the show in a full bridal look that was an amalgamation of seven vintage wedding dresses layered together. In between the first and the final look, the runway was made up of other iconic figures in Demna’s life, including New York night life legend Amanda Lepore, reality television star Kim Kardashian, the designer’s former professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp, and even his personal trainer, proving to be Balenciaga’s most intimate show since the Georgia-born designer took over the reigns in 2015.
Demna is a designer known to infuse his shows with some messaging on the state of the world, politics, or dress codes, whether it’s about the horrors being inflicted on the people of Ukraine (fall 2022) or our overconsumption habits (spring 2023), but this season, the designer seemed to eschew any kind of social commentary or observation and chose to instead celebrate the people closest to him. Or as the show notes tell it, the latest offering is “what fashion is to Demna in its most personal way.”
Set to the soundtrack of a voiceover featuring Isabelle Huppert reciting instructions on how to make a tailored jacket, Demna staged his new collection in Paris on a warm Sunday morning (though you wouldn’t be able to tell based on all of the black oversized hoodies, leather jackets, and baggy trousers sported by guests) at Place Vauban, a stones throw away from the Cour du Dôme des Invalides, the centuries-old chapel commissioned by Louis XIV and which holds the tomb of Napoleon Bonaparte. Inside the purpose-built venue, walls were covered in crimson, velvet draping and dotted with rows of matching chairs, evoking the ambience of a theater, though that was as theatrical as the collection and ensuing show got.
Continuing to strip back to the fundamentals of design, a decision made by the creative director following the global scandal set off by two advertising campaigns last year, the spring 2024 collection wasn’t that different from previous offerings, featuring “Demna’s greatest hits”— a pre-dominantly black color palette, supersized proportions, baggy silhouettes, exaggerated shoulders, and chunky sneakers. There was eveningwear options in the form of pleated dresses and sparkling gowns. Meanwhile, Demna-isms showed up in the grocery bag totes, terrycloth bath robes worn as jackets, stilettos and loafers carried as clutches, and passports complete with boarding passes, which upon closer inspection, were revealed to be wallets. A new Rodeo bag with a built-in open flap and heavy decorative chains takes hyper-customization to another level.
What was, however, new was the implementation of a lower-impact leather alternative called LUNAFORM™, which was specifically designed for Balenciaga. It was the first time that the animal and plastic-free textile grown from fermented nanocellulose was applied in clothing, used in the construction of a floor-length bathrobe. There was an element of sustainability and eco-consciousness peppered throughout the collection— upcycled garments sourced from vintage shops around Europe and America materialized into gorgeous, red carpet-worthy gowns.
And okay, let’s say for argument’s sake that the new collection was just a simple rehashing of previously-seen silhouettes— still, cool clothes are cool clothes, no matter how many times you see them.
