EXCERPT: BALENCIAGA FALL 2024. COUTURE - PARIS

 

"...In its strange dichotomy, seasonal fashion weeks are more or less a continuation of its current designer styles, which are now seasonless.  Let alone the Couturier, who now only exist as an idealism of last Seventy years, before Ready-to-Wear and its duplication of looks, pushed couture out from the 1950s onward.

Demna's fine line of merging controversy with his antifashion ethos, and as I have discussed numerous times with my reviews of his seasonal collections for the famous fashion house, offers very little respite to the curious.  In fact repetition has clearly set in, and this can be seen on the back of Kering, the holding company that owns the Balenciaga brand name, writing, metaphorically speaking, blank cheques for Demna to run loose with in his creative control.  To which he appears to have total reign of Balenciaga, in lieu of Chinese consumption markets buying up Balenciaga's $1000+ preworn looking sneakers.  

Yet, can Demna, who has only recently encroached onto Couture, by utilizing the Balenciaga brand name, respectfully fulfil the Balenciaga couture legacy?  Of course he doesn't.  And nor would Demna, controlling Balenciaga as a modern day rework of timelines, attempt to fit the brand into any respectfully Couture or artisan project.  Only offering, in its redundancy, the popular culture of hyperreal, which he has intended Balenciaga to become..."

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Full review:  chiasmusmagazine.blogspot.com/2024/07/balenciaga-fall-2024-couture-paris.html 

(A.Glass 2024)