7/18/2016 TheShapeofThingstoCome|FashionShowReview,ReadytoWearAutumn2016|BoF

READY-TO-WEAR - AUTUMN 2016

Balenciaga

The Shape of Things to Come

Demna Gvasalia's debut collection for Balenciaga had the rightness of

something weve been waiting to see forever. And it immediately cast
a giant shadow over the entire season.

BY TIM BLANKS
MARCH 6, 2016 15:15

PARIS, France The venue for Demna Gvasalias debut as Balenciagas new artistic director on
Sunday morning was a huge television studio. Its padded white walls sealed in the specially
composed beats, a soundtrack so sonorous that it punched deep into the gut, moved molecules

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around, reshaped the air, an aural counterpoint to the way Gvasalias designs reshaped
Autumn/Winter 2016.

The other night after his Vetements show, he was rhapsodising about the endless possibilities
that proportion oered a designer. There, Gvasalia was challenging conventional notions of
form. Here, he had only to absorb the lessons of the grand master Cristobal, the couturier whose
search for transcendence through cloth brought fashion closer to art than any other designer
managed to do, before or since.

The revelation of Sundays presentation was Gvasalias ability to translate the essence of
Balenciagas couture into a ready-to-wear collection without diminishing its purity or its
emotional charge. It had the rightness of something weve been waiting to see forever. And it
immediately cast a giant shadow over the entire season.

Attitude is all with Gvasalia. The tailoring which opened the show featured light padding that
pushed the hips forward and the shoulders back, instantly establishing an elegant authority, not
just Gvasalias but also for the women wearing the clothes. Later there were pencil skirts with a
kick pleat in the front, which similarly shoved the body forward.

Classic sportswear pieces were transgured with another couture trope, the portrait neckline,
with anoraks, parkas, puas, trenches and bombers pulled back o the shoulders to gracefully
highlight the sternum. It looked like something a stylist might do for eect, but Gvasalia said it
was built into the architecture of the garment.

He was inspired by Cristobal Balenciagas way of working with his clients, 360 degrees in the
round. (Again, the sound reected that idea, pulsing right around the room in bursts. A single
giant speaker rotated furiously, mesmerisingly in the centre of the ceiling.)

The edifying plainness of the hair and non-makeup underscored the rigour of the shows
opening passages, but these were shortly replaced by owing fantasy orals over candy-striped
stockings, and gilded oral brocades and strapless dresses which could pass for contemporary
variants of dressier items from the annals of Cristobal. And they were co-opted by coats whose
sensible, utilitarian nature was emphasised by the Laundromat bags carried by the models.

It was obvious that Gvasalia was oering a complete, thought-out wardrobe, the same way that
Balenciaga would craft everything from evening gowns to gardening clothes for clients like
Mona von Bismarck.

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Its important to know the past to feel the future, he said after his show, but you cant drive a
car looking in the rear-view mirror. History needs the here and now, and theres scarcely
anything more present in fashion right now than Vetements. But Gvasalias fusion of past and
present was so alchemical that the mutant streetwear which has been his calling card at
Vetements was elevated, elegantly transmuted by the inuence of classic couture.

In Gvasalias own mind, there was a clear continuity: the last model in the Vetements show was
the rst model in the Balenciaga show. Its all part of a process grunge to glory. This is going to
be fun.

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