EXCERPT: BALENCIAGA. PRE-FALL 2024 - LOS ANGELES.
"...Demna's Balenciaga always seems to invoke in me the theory from the late dissent French postmodernist philosopher Jean Baudrillard, who famously wrote "Simulacra and Simulation" in 1980 as an underlying blueprint to simulation theory, beyond the science friction of a supercomputer, it is us, living in a postmodern society which has become inundated with exaggerated meaning and images, thus we have all become, willingly or not, part of the hyperreal. As reality becomes more and more swamped by the hyperreal order. And without giving too much credit to Demna's creative invigoration, and its possible effect on the spectator, for me it's more of an observation within its absurdity. As he infuses a plethora of celebrities to his deconstructive narrative of the Balenciaga brand name (Please refer to my Pre-Fall 2023 review), Demna's hyperreal debacle has returned to the only place that could possible host all of his mirrored contradictions, Los Angeles.
It is very difficult to see Demna's collections as avant-garde, risque or even overtly creative, in comparison to his peers of the last 40 years. Yet, somewhere within the excessiveness and dichotomy of style over substance, when a worn looking pair of Balenciaga sneakers will set you back over $1000, there is something from Demna that seems to want to shine through. And it may not directly emanate from the designer himself. As two major proxy wars wage on, it is the genocide of Palestinians by a Western armed Israel which has encapsulated what a 21st Century Fascist state looks like. As the world is leaning more and more towards the far right. Demna's Balenciaga mirrors Hollywood hyperreality perfectly, which could well indeed offer a clue, that from here, in this 'desert of the real', as Demna's parody has now become a parody of itself. Then it would seem, that the collapse of civilisation had already occured.
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Full review: chiasmusmagazine.blogspot.com/2023/12/balenciaga-pre-fall-2024-los-angeles.html
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