The most anticipated debut of Paris Fashion Week took place in a white box of a padded sound stage in the far reaches of the 15th Arrondissement as a cold wind blew in from the Seine. Guests trooped down a staircase covered in industrial gray carpet against the soundtrack of air raid sirens, to see Demna Gvasalia, the Georgian fox in the iconoclastic Vetements henhouse of fashion, unveil his Balenciaga. A hush of expectation settled over the crowd.
Of course, Mr. Gvasalia had planned it that way. The location he chose, after all, was a soundproofed room. That was not a happenstance.
A palpable calm and level of control was the single most defining factor of Mr. Gvasalia’s first collection for the house Cristobal built. After an inconsistent three-year stewardship under the former creative director Alexander Wang, it was also a much-needed reboot.
Though Mr. Gvasalia’s work with the collective Vetements is often referred to as revolutionary (how much so is debatable), there was nothing radical about this Balenciaga. Indeed, Nicolas Ghesquière, who defined the house for the contemporary consumer for 15 years until he left in 2012, was arguably more extreme in his experimentalism; his relationship to the legacy of Balenciaga more conceptual than concrete.
But by drawing on the architectural approach of Balenciaga the man, as well as the visual language he created — the cocoon coat, the sac dress — and combining them with the wardrobe elements of today, Mr. Gvasalia wrested the brand into 2016. Opera coats became puffa jackets and trenches, the collars spread to frame the clavicle, shoulders dropped and pulled into peaks at back. Button-down shirts, denim jackets and pea coats were cut on the slant and curved into the shape of a chrysalis, and suits in houndstooth and tweed had the hips triangulated out and up, like a false front, in an echo of the classic couture silhouette (shoulders slouched forward, stomach sucked in, bones sharp as steel).
If the latter pieces may be difficult to wear — most women do not want their hips as a focal point — and if stirrup pants (an unfortunate trend at the moment) and multi-print paisley and floral scarf dresses with matching jacquard boots were less successful, strapless evening sheaths in silver sequined flowers or embroidered velvet with a kick pleat over one knee had a refined rigor. As a whole, the collection was clear in antecedent and concise in effect.
And though there were some clear Vetements-isms on view in the play on proportion and awareness of the everyday, it briskly allayed the fear that Mr. Gvasalia would smash the Balenciaga name and heritage to the ground. Instead of being intimidated by the house’s heritage, he embraced it and made it his own. With this risk, a reward.
By VANESSA FRIEDMAN
Source New York Times
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