Balenciaga is selling a bracelet that looks like a roll of tape. A tape bracelet, if you will. For creative director Demna, just another day at the office. For the rest of the internet, shock and outrage.
The tape bracelet was revealed during Balenciaga's Winter 2024 runway show in early March but escaped wider notice because of course it did. Who notices a ring of tape?
We did. During the VIP re-see on March 5, Highsnobiety secured the internet's first in-hand (on-wrist?) look at the "gaffer bangle," as it's called. Talk about keeping your eyes peeled! You know, because tape. Yeah.
Balenciaga's newest accessory almost immediately blew up on Highsnobiety's TikTok, where the majority of commenters fumed.
The typical comments appeared en masse: "Balenciaga is a social experiment," "You have to be joking," "My dad made this when he was painting the house. I guess He's just that fashionable." And so on. As always.
The tape bracelet's gentle controversy is interesting, though, because it's the first Balenciaga product that's surfed a wave of divisiveness to surprise virality since the luxury label returned to form in 2022.
Before Balenciaga took a step back following 2021's inadvertently controversial campaign, the luxury label made dominated the internet with a serious of stunt products that were shockingly, consistently effective at garnering attention. Back then, all press was good press. It gets the people talking.
The seven-layer parka. The pre-destroyed sneaker. The leather "trash bag." The Crocs stiletto heels. Balenciaga's done it all and practically generated performative indignation (and eyeballs) on demand.
The tape bracelet is merely the latest in Balenciaga's long, proud, provocative tradition. So why are people so outraged?
Seriously: we've all seen this sort of shtick from Balenciaga before, wherein an ordinary-looking object is pedestaled as readymade luxury object. So why is the tape bracelet so divisive?
In the big picture, perhaps it's that Balenciaga hasn't attracted this level of pearl-clutching in nearly two years. This is the first Balenciaga-style reaction that Balenciaga itself has generated in many months.
In the short term, the tape bracelet is otherwise so innocuously ordinary-looking that it really does look like conventional roll of tape being sold as a luxury accessory (note that Balenciaga's tape bracelet isn't actually being sold yet; as it's from Winter 2024, it won't release until later this year).
The tape bracelet isn't even a unique idea in the Balenciaga lexicon, really. Not only did Balenciaga wrap Kim Kardashian in yellow logo tape for one of its fashion shows but it's sold hoodies with a "taped" logo for several years by now.
The tape motif may be a reference to Maison Margiela, where Demna cut his teeth before funding Vetements and going on to join Balenciaga. It certainly wouldn't be his first Margiela-adjacent offering.
In fact, you could argue that much of Demna's readymade Balenciaga clothing — multiple T-shirts stitched into a single dress, printed hoodies that challenge fashion's staid norms — is informed by Margiela's design language, though Demna's Balenciaga success are all his own.
But the big takeaway from Balenciaga's tape bracelet is that Demna still knows how to shock.
In an era where Vetements, no longer affiliated with Demna, is arguably pushing the industry's envelope harder than the man himself, the reaction to the tape bracelet feels like a return to form.
Finally, we're back to Balenciaga pushing buttons — for the right reasons.
Demna's singular design acumen was never in question (rumors he was potentially to be replaced at Balenciaga remain unproven) but, for a while, it felt like his gift for creating things equally insightful and inciteful had faded.
Not so much any more. There are now no less than two separate posts on entirely different Reddit pages, dozens of tweets, tons of TikTok duets, and even coverage from news organizations.
Demna did it. He broke through. Again. In our overstimulated digital age, that's quite a feat.
