Excerpt: Balenciaga. Pre-Fall 2025 - Paris

 

"When Demna Gvasalia drops the garish aesthetic and its in jokes, while attempting his version of wu wei ("effortless action"), the Georgian designer, and if you haven't been aware of by now, who is also the creative director of Balenciaga, actually ends up devising something unique, and by all definition, striking, for the Balenciaga brand name.   Kering, the mega conglomerate who owns the Balenciaga, share price has plunged year-on-year down over 30%, mainly due to China's slowdown and operational costs going upward.  Are we going to see luxury brands pull back from large extravagant shows that have been the norm post-COVID, open up-the-economy hyper consumption of 2022?

Yet, there have been moments of lavishness on the runways of 2024, while at the same time lookbooks returning ala during the 2020 pandemic, whether or not this is a cost effective motivation of the industry is disputable, but there is no doubting, as mentioned that the luxury markets are under financial pressure.  And this could be seen with the rumours of Kering's rival Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton (LVMH) owned by French billionaire Bernard Arnault, who is up there as a Elon Musk rival to whom could be the richest man alive, maybe shifting its manufacturing base to the U.S., from France.  Wooed by Donald Trump 2.0, in his vain effort to turn America into a 1950s esque manufacturing powerhouse redux, with lower tax rates for companies to set up shop there..."

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Full review:  chiasmusmagazine.blogspot.com/2025/02/balenciaga-pre-fall-2025-paris.html

(A.Glass 2025)