From the chiasmus archive: June 9th, 2023 "Balenciaga Resort 2024 - Paris " In lieu of Demna Gvasalia stepping down from Balenciaga, after ten years, with his last couture showing for the iconic fashion brand occuring on July 9th 2025. I will be posting all of my Balenciaga reviews of the last 10 years*

 

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 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 motivation.     

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.   

Beginning with:  BALENCIAGA. FALL 2021 COUTURE – PARIS

"Whilst studying Demna Gvsalia’s street styled avant garde take on Balaneciaga, to which he had morphed his former brand Vetement’s that he started in 2014, as an antifashion imprint onto the famous fashion house.  There has to be a retrospective in lieu of a pandemic that has floored and at the same time dismantled sociological and economical structures across the board, it was always going to be a challenge to bring back and redevelop aesthetics that reflect our turbulent times beyond any novelty.  And this is the sticking point for any risqué fashion designer, the counter culture or at least what we deem as rebellious nature as a cultural aspect of our society, pretty much doesn’t exist in our 21st Century digitalized world any more or less than a romanticism and nostalgia of the 1960s onward.  Demna, who is of Georgian heritage, along with his brother Guram, continue to guide the Vetement’s brand, have been able to impose an exclusivity to what they portray as antifashion statement, by redefining its purpose under the banner of luxury branding..."

Full review: chiasmusmagazine.blogspot.com/2022/07/balenciaga-fall-2021-couture-paris.html  

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(A.Glass 2023)