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Balenciaga. Pre-Fall 2022




If there was ever an era, in my opinion, that heralded in the beginning of that digitally enhanced, over ambitious entrepreneurial boulevard of broken dreams, it had to be the mid 1990s which, in all of its glory, was the dawn of the Internet. Now, over thirty years later in 2020, that 90’s imprint with its residual fast paced, excesses that everyone-could-make-it, has flopped into the mess that we have today. The overstretching of markets, where popular culture has been multiplied into a simulacrum and divided up on social media to serve as a countless marketing channels.  Morphing into hashtags and catch cries with its tedious and one sided Culture War that is showing no signs of abating. However, this digital social media backlash and cult of celebritydom to which, in a feigned way, creates an impression that everyone is equally connected within the cyberspace paradigm, has been explored by Demna of the many seasons during his tenure with Balenciaga.  
There is no doubting, aesthetically, Demna’s Georgian roots in growing up within the Communist Caucasus through the 1980s and as a young teenager in post-Communist Georgia, when it finally gained independence in 1991, has been reflected with his fashion designs. In his sardonic and subtle poke and Western excess, allowing his collections to be cleverly orchestrated with an added commentary on our obsession with the supernumerary, whilst designing for the prestige Balenciaga brand under the conglomerate Kering group. One could say that Demna also holds a degree of contradiction in his backlash of designer fashion by creating uber-styled clothes for international markets. But, very much like his brother Guram who remains at the helm Demna’s founded brand Vetements, both have tried to rewrite designer styles with their piqued Eastern European sentiment towards the luxury industry. And this can be seen with Demna’s latest offering of a parallel Balenciaga universe, in similarity to his debut Couture collection this year which a reworking of the late Cristóbal Balenciaga finery, to which his Pre-Fall 2022 array, in an obscure fictionalized presentation, was created to look like it came from the early 1990s and seen as a “lost collection” before fashion designer Nicolas Ghesquière began his creative director run in 1997 for the renowned fashion house.  
Portrayed as a mix of Polaroid snapshots and sketchy a VHS tape recording, obviously manufactured to look like it is over 30 years old, this novel concept in all of its hyper-reality does indeed create a nostalgic charm, utilizing Demna’s ragtag team of models, the idea is also, when looking at it from a philosophical concept, somewhat unsettling. Representing a collection that not only didn’t exist 30 years ago, but recreating an event that never existed at all in a very convincing way. It is not so much that Demna is plundering the past for ideas, the fashion industry has, for the most part, guilty of, but it is this time travel inspired simulation that when viewed through the digital relays feels empty and lost. A theatrical analog performance of hungry ghosts trying to find appeasement by replaying and acting out an event over and over again on an old VHS tape, but never satisfied.  
Which is also seen in Demna’s latest collection, drawing up styles that do feel like the worst part of 1990s fashion when MDMA and dance clubbing became a fused indulgence, ensuring it to be a more forgettable time than a nostalgic one and so were these styles of so called 90’s dance fashion. Which have shown up of late, seen with Rick Owens latest collections of imprinting 1970s hedonism onto 1990s dance clubs. Although Demna has also inscribed the grunge/techno fusion of denim and oversize flared pants in a similar vein to Owens, he has done so with an inspired underground club feel ala Eastern Europe less-stylized array.
It is hard to see this Pre Fall collection as developmental to Demna’s Balenciaga apart from the gimmick of bygone visual technology and maybe the desire to return to an era, that, as mentioned, was the beginning and end of that digitized Utopian ‘dream’ that we are all living today.


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