For a show that was held in silence, Gvasalia’s haute couture debut this summer made a glorious noise.
‘It’s the Cherry On Top’: Demna Gvasalia Brings Haute Couture Back to Balenciaga
For Demna Gvasalia, Balenciaga’s artistic director, the haute couture—reintroduced to the storied brand on July 7 (for the first time since its founder retired in 1968) with a powerful, elegant presentation, shown in silence and fragranced with incense, that managed to be both reverential and iconoclastic—is “almost like a holy grail, like an altar in a church.” When he joined Balenciaga in 2015, Gvasalia was well aware of the house’s history and its roots in impeccably conceived, handcrafted couture under the direction of Cristóbal Balenciaga, a humbly born Spaniard whom Christian Dior hailed as “the master of us all.” Balenciaga shaped fashion from 1937—after he fled the Spanish Civil War to establish his already two-decade-old brand in Paris—until he shuttered his house in 1968 (complaining bitterly that his career in couture, during which he dressed the most stylish and demanding women of the century, was “a dog’s life”).
“The reason for him closing was actually the birth of ready-to-wear,” says Gvasalia, in the weeks leading up to the show. “Today we can come back to couture, thanks to ready-to-wear’s success.” Gvasalia’s approach to Balenciaga is centered on what he calls an “aesthetic pyramid.” At the base, as he explains, are “cool sneakers, then a fashion layer—more streetwear-oriented fashion, easy to wear, everyday,” and then “more conceptual, upscale fashion—a level above the streetwear.” Above that, he says, “I felt there was this big black hole.
“A lot of people see me in the context of streetwear, but that’s not at all how I see myself as a designer,” Gvasalia continues. But why couture now? “To be honest,” he confides, “I needed some time to earn some ‘economic credibility’—I won’t call it money—to afford to do couture! I needed to work all these layers in the pyramid. [And] I needed this time to get in the comfort zone for myself—I wouldn’t have dared until recently.”
Tuft Love
Model Yoonmi Sun wears a Balenciaga Couture coat— inspired by Cristóbal Balenciaga’s fall 1950 collection. Domed hat by Philip Treacy.
To immerse himself and his chosen cabine of models in the haute couture mood, Gvasalia projected a remarkable series of films of Cristóbal Balenciaga’s haute couture presentations—shot by photographer Tom Kublin from 1960 to 1968—on a giant screen in his atelier during fittings. Unlike the electrifyingly atmospheric, fast-paced, and lavishly produced spectacles that Gvasalia himself masterfully stages, those earlier shows were very different affairs. As the footage reveals, the couturier’s models (who were, famously, chosen for their supercilious hauteur rather than their looks, while Gvasalia’s pan-generational casting deliberately challenged conventional beauty tropes to focus on presence and character) slunk through the salons, removing their jackets and coats with jerky movements and holding up cards with the number of the outfit, while a scattering of clients gossiped and chain-smoked—and, occasionally, simply got up and left. (The collections were shown every day for several weeks, so the privileged customers—and the store buyers and manufacturers looking for inspirational clothes to copy for their own customers—who had passed muster with the terrifying directrice, Mademoiselle Renée, came and went at will.)
While he worked on his own fittings, “that Cristóbal Balenciaga aesthetic spirit was present,” Gvasalia says—something that inspired him to make hats for the first time, resulting in dramatic, flying-saucer creations in collaboration with Philip Treacy. “I discovered millinery!” Gvasalia exults. A hat, he avers, “is such a weird object—I’ve been doing baseball hats, but this is a new experience.”
Gvasalia also felt strongly about the importance of having an “iconic address—like Chanel has the rue Cambon,” he says. “At Balenciaga, we are kind of like a nomad.” Gvasalia discovered that Cristóbal Balenciaga’s original salons, at 10 Avenue George V, were presently being used as storage, which for him was “blasphemous. I felt very sad—I wanted to give this address back to the house.” In reclaiming the space as the house’s haute couture salons once again, Gvasalia envisaged an experiment in time travel—“as though when they closed the house in ’68, the door was locked, and we just reopened it now.” Following a meticulous restoration that involved researching and using authentic 1950s paint, and adding a Sleeping Beauty–like layer of patina—replete with flaking plaster and trompe l’oeil water damage—the reborn space was used to present Gvasalia’s debut collection. “It’s a tiny, tiny place,” he says, laughing. “After all these huge [pre-pandemic] shows, I have the smallest backstage I’ve ever had—but couture is such an exclusive thing, [and] that makes it really special.”
This story originally appeared on: Vogue - Author:Hamish Bowles,Anton Corbijn
