Paris Fashion Week 2022: Balenciaga leads the way

Dhe invitations say it all. For the Loewe show, the moped messengers bring red anthurium blossoms to the fashion editors’ hotels. The bright flamingo flower with the large umbels sets the theme. For spring-summer 2023, the brand, which belongs to the LVMH group, sees anthuriums on clothes, bras, shoe decorations and metal breastplates covered with ceramic paint. “A natural product that looks like a design object and is treated as such”: Loewe designer Jonathan Anderson’s description only gives a faded idea of ​​how a collection can flourish with the shapes and colors of nature.

The prêt-à-porter week could be described by the invitations – then you wouldn’t even have to drive to the shows, some of which take place far away from the city center. The self-image is revealed in the card, which is placed in an envelope addressed by calligraphers. Chanel: big and powerful. Givenchy: black and cool. MiuMiu: transparent and swinging. Hermès: minimalist and warm. Isabel Marant: Exactly – the dates are on a measuring tape.

An antithesis to polished luxury?

But all this is nothing compared to Balenciaga. Demna, who as a designer does not have a last name, has a dirty old leather purse sent as an invitation. Inside are credit cards, customer cards, a receipt from the “Marché Vegan” (111.75 euros), 150 old French francs and an ID card: Natalia Antunes, born October 2, 1955, French, lives in Paris, 1.70 meters tall . A found object as an admission ticket. And a clue to a biographical mission? Who is Natalia Antunes? Natalia: most likely an Eastern European. Antunes: most likely a Portuguese.

Already wrong thought. “I hate boxes and I hate labels and I hate being labeled and placed in a box,” Demna writes in his “show notes.” The designer, who comes from Georgia, grew up in Germany, lives in Zurich and works in Paris, does not want to be pigeonholed. You can guess it: the huge Balenciaga hall is lined with stinking mud. After the show he will say that this is “the antithesis of polished luxury”, a criticism of the sterile system. He operates the system himself, with logo caps for 350 euros and garbage bags for 1400 euros: the Demna paradox of the capitalist critic of capitalism.

Walking on dirty water, led by Kanye West, sad characters, angry, broken, hopeless: metaphysical homelessness on the catwalk. The existential impact of Balenciaga fashion was felt for the first time on March 6, in the fall-winter show, which featured refugee figures desperately battling a winter storm. Less than two weeks after the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, that was a blatant signal for the jaded clientele in the front row. Many guests cried. The shivering models were wrapped in emergency blankets backstage. As a native Georgian, Demna knows Russian aggressors.

“For me it was a logical follow-up,” says the designer backstage. “Because what happens when the snow melts?” Then only 275 cubic meters of mud from a peat bog will remain for spring and summer 2023 – inspired by Santiago Sierra, who filled the Kestner Society in Hanover with mud in 2013: “His installations are iconic. So the black-brown mass sticks to the walls and lines a huge dark hollow in the middle, reminiscent of a mass grave. Is that Balenciaga? Only the bag, which looks like a muff, was a reference to Cristóbal Balenciaga, says Demna. “It was mostly a me show.” He allows his own opinion; as undoubtedly the most influential designer alive, he can afford it.