Balenciaga. Fall 2025 - Paris Fashion Week.

 

As Kering, the holding company who owns Balenciaga, share price has fallen 39% over the last 12 months, and worst for François-Henri Pinault the CEO of Kering, is the flagship brand Gucci, whose revenue is down 24% in the last four months of 2024, after the extremely talented Italian creative director Alessandro Michele left the iconic brand in 2022, replaced by fellow Italian designer Sabato de Sarn.  And in Pinault's most recent reshuffle, de Sarno is gone, and the first non Italian designer for Gucci, since Tom Ford stepped down from Gucci in 2004, will be none other than Demna Gvasalia.  Could one see this coming?  Maybe.  If one is to refer to Demna's Spring 2022 "Hacking" collection of Gucci , as an omen. 

Demna did not reveal the Kering reshuffle news at his final Balenciaga runway show to any of the invitees in attendance, who would've been none the wiser that they were viewing Demna's last Balenciaga showing at Paris Fashion Week on the 9th March 2025, but what he say to the Fashion press held an interesting precursor to the recent news, "Fashion has become like this giant rumor mill, which is fun too, because people like the guessing game. But I think in that fog of rumors".   So, if you did hear that rumour, or guessed this was coming, or woke up from a dream and wrote the prediction down.  Then you were right.  

I have been reviewing Demna's Balenciaga since 2015, when Alexander Wang stepped down and Demna began to rework Balenciaga into his reworn 'destroyed' sneakers (at $2000USD), deconstructed styles, hyperreal in-jokes of Western consumerism, mixed with his homage to Eastern European 1990s underground raves, where everyone wore wearing Adidas 'fakes'.  Demna will leave Balenciaga after nearly Ten years, with a pocket filled with controversial ad campaigns and those extravagant backlash Balenciaga runway shows, as he moves across within the Kering corporation to the Gucci offices, under the watchful eye of Billionaire François-Henri Pinault (who owns Balenciaga and Gucci via Kering via Group Artemis).

Such is the turmoil that the luxury fashion industry is facing in lieu of rising operational costs, falling demand and a recession in China, Kering's number one market.  Also add to the mix Trump's tariffs on everything, and a looming European trade war with America, and anything else you can think of that could be on the horizon.  So, once again, if you correctly predicted that Demna was on the way out from Balenciaga to rescue Gucci.  Can you see any other dark clouds forming on the horizon?

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(A.Glass 2025)