EXCERPT: BALENCIAGA RESORT 2024 - PARIS

 

After my Pre-Fall 2023 review of Demna Gvasalia's Balenciaga, I felt that a conclusion is probably in line as a fashion reviewer of the many of Gvasalia's Balenciaga's shows, it is the relentless expectations of the Balenciaga brand name via its holding company Kering, to have a perpetual presence for the iconic fashion house.  And in light of the comeback of this so called anti-establishment fashion designer after his fall from grace.  There is a growing repetitiveness of the Balenciaga showpiece, that by its definition is becoming more and more diluted with Gvasalia's creative drive.  So, this review of Gvasalia's Resort 2024 showing for Balenciaga, which is clearly a reworking of Couture that is deliberately out of season. And I mean this literally, as the filmed collection shows Gvasalia's displaced and misplaced looking models move in and out of the wind and rain, in front of the late Cristóbal Balenciaga couture maison in Paris.

Toying with the spirits of the past is an unwise motavation.     

I will choose, maybe randomly, snippets from all my reviews of Balenciaga over the many years.  See if it matches up for this Resort collection.

BALENCIAGA - RESORT 2023. NEW YORK CITY

"Demna Gsvalia has returned to his Doomsday ethos to which he excels at more than not, as noted with his striking Fall 2022 show which was held at the cusp of the global pandemic, when a micro entity that is not consciously aware of its actions, wreaked havoc on the human race.  The virus set in motion our fears and anxieties, which in turn caused the pathogen to spread and due to asymmetrical vaccinations from poorer countries,  the virus mutated into dominate strain/s.  It brought out, generally speaking, the worst in us all, with economics and politics overriding the millions of lives lost, which were mostly the poor.  The on and again and off again lockdowns and frantic reopening's of major economies, in which governments all along had an overall hesitancy in quarantining outbreaks prior to widespread vaccinations.  Only galvanized the more extreme right wing elements of politics, that this was a conspiracy to control the masses with vaccines.   When the reality was and still is: greed.  This desire for attributed wealth, was the motivator to return us all back to so called normal and we were all in on it.  No conspiracy.  And there are two charts that one must study to realize this, the first, is the millions who died from COVID-19, the second, was when global stock markets, rallied after the global pandemic was declared .   Both rose parabolically at the same time and over the two years since most of the world has been vaccinated, one has plateaued, that being the human lives lost and the other is now falling - which are stock prices.   Greed has since gone bust.

So, Demna hosting Balenciaga's Resort 2023 showing on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange seems fitting, at least from his antifashion stance, but Demna does skirt on that edge of contradiction, which is fine if one is honest in regards to their personal dispositions.  And it can be said, that it is better to be aware of their contractionary behavior, rather than deluded by its impression.   Such is the artist, who resides within the gray area of aesthetics, by commercializing those visual mediums, in her/his portrayal of a chaotic society, that by its definition is that contradiction.  As we wrangle with the moral and immoral on a daily bases.    And in lieu, it should be noted that Kering, the holding company of Balenciaga did extremely well during the height of the global pandemic with its share price peaking at 788 EUR, now with the global economy faltering as supply chains and inflation are pushing costs up, the price has since dropped to 450..."

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(A.Glass 2022/2023)