Balenciaga. Fall 2020 Ready-to-Wear - Paris Fashion Week.

(Images from the designer and the public domain. Credited to the photographer/company where applicable: Gorunway.com)

Demna Gvasalia is a very talented designer, with gimmicky showings and his antithesis of fashion aside, the latest show piece for Balenciaga is far more serious, in fact, one could say a beginning of a mature inclination for the ex-Vetements designer.  There has been an odd imprint cast over the Fall 2020 fashion weeks, after Milan Fashion week when the Covid-19 virus broke out in Lombardy near Milan, it was intermixed with a shock and awe whilst at the same time the shows continued onward.  Yet, the ferocity and speed to which this virus has spread, has not only evoked a dazed and in some ways confused sentiment, there has been a lot of internet chatter based around fear and misinformation – but it has been the markets that have essentially spoken the truth in their cold reality.  That relying on single supply chain from China, that has almost completely shutdown in the shadow of the outbreak, could turn out to be a fatal error of over reliance.  Nature has no moral expectations in its implication to the plight of humanity and a virus by scientific definition maybe just a genetically flawed organism, if it chooses to kill itself and the host.  So, this is no punishment from god. 

Still, designers, such as Gvasalia maybe looking towards faith for some answers and on the whole, it can, since there has been a move away in our societies from religion as a belief, offer a reprieve.  There has however been, paradoxically, an embracing of the institutional aspects of religious concepts in the last few decades.  The appeal of church and marriage are very much alive and well.  Gvasalia for his latest showing, has retrospected his appeal of growing of up in Georgia, under a veil of confession and repent, in all of its gothic overtures and macabre aspects that is the Orthodox Catholic church.  

This new aspect of embracing spirituality in fashion could be a refreshing direction as a trend for 2020, but also as a reflection, away from the tedium and self indulgence of the culture wars of the last 5 yrs.  Yet, Gvasalia has offered a reason, at least within the myth of old testament fire and brimstone, that maybe this turbulent time that is upon us.  Is due to our actions, with his Fall 2020 show entrenched within the Stygian, as models walk down a runway immersed within a watery impression.  In some of the sharpest and precision tailoring that I seen in along time, with adhoc show notes relaying degrees of Gvasalia's novelty inspired showmanship.  He has never the less set the tone as he would for any marketable fashion show.  With buyers situated within the audience of French film director Luc Besson's Cité du Cinema in Saint Denis, for them, the purchase of a soon-to-be-released Balenciga design, would be that hope of a tomorrow.

The overall collection, although it holds aspects of Gvasalia's Catholic influences, is far darker, which makes sense, if spiritualism is true to the human psyche, than the true spiritualist rejects and accepts god in a simultaneous manner.  He/she is both within nature and outside from it and in a meditative sense, god can only exist as the self.  Which all core aspects of faiths inscribe as a meaning of knowing that life and death are forever connected.  Then we should probably accept that Earth came from the Hadean and humans evolved from Chaos.  Our impact on nature would thus be inconsequential within the scheme of the Universe. 

And as John Milton, the famous English poet who wrote the epic poem Paradise Lost, once said “...maybe its better to reign in Hell than serve...”