In Demna's Final Balenciaga Collection, It All Comes Home
Demna's tenure at Balenciaga marks one of the most influential runs in modern fashion history. It's quite difficult to think of any other single designer who so strongly influenced the nature of daily dress more than Demna. And now it's all over. Or is it?
Before Demna begins reshaping Gucci — and perhaps, once again, our wardrobes — he's giving Balenciaga a big kiss-off with his final couture collection.
Demna opened his final couture show with a hushed roll call, softly naming friends, collaborators, and longtime Balenciaga muses in a quiet invocation of his chosen family.
As their names rang out, Sade’s “No Ordinary Love” swelled through the room, a slow-burning ballad recently revived by TikTok and now repurposed as the emotional undercurrent of Demna's Balenciaga farewell.
What followed felt like a requiem. Models emerged in sculptural drapery, cloaked silhouettes, and restrained tailoring in modern homage to Cristóbal Balenciaga’s late-couture signatures: envelope dresses, cocooned volumes, and the razor precision of ’60s minimalism.
There were also glimmers of Demna’s own archive in the strong-shouldered tailoring pulled from his 2021 couture debut and sweeping silhouettes that recalled earlier explorations of clothing as armor and clothing for anonymity.
But the designer's Balenciaga goodbye wasn’t solemn. He evoked classic glamour with opera gloves, heirloom jewelry, and decadent furs both tender and tongue-in-cheek, as if Demna were dressing the ghosts of couture's past for one final front row (note the old-Hollywood look that Kim Kardashain wore while sitting front row).
Big stuff but also all par for Demna's course.
At the Georgian designer's prior Balenciaga couture presentations, ordinary objects were recontextualized as authentically artful garments.
This was no Duchampian stunt but a genuine meeting of craft and concept.
For instance, the humble hoodie was revived as a literal work of art: What appeared to be a print was actually a hand-painted artwork, its sleeves were lined with ultrathin aluminum to retain a crinkled texture, and its interior was hand-lined in matte scuba satin. It was priced at €35,000 (about $41,000). A more conventional printed couture hoodie retailed for €2,500 (about $2,900).
This was the genius of Demna. The seemingly ordinary treated with the same level of reverence as any couture gown, an extension of the project that he's put forth since his early days at Balenciaga when he elevated metal merch and ripped jeans to luxury status.
Don't expect Demna's Balenciaga successor, Pierpaolo Piccioli, to follow the same approach. Maybe you shouldn't even expect Demna's Gucci to do so, either.
Balenciaga by Demna was a bright, brilliant moment in time. And now, it's over.
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