Would you pay £575 for a Britney Spears tour T-shirt?
The Balenciaga portion of that doesn't seem to be too seismic – 4 per cent according to Kering – which is a saving grace considering what has come before; a 2023 controversy that almost destroyed the house. First of all, a campaign featuring children holding teddy bears in leather bondage gear. Weird, but not unexpected in Balenciagaland. Then the truly mind boggling follow up; a campaign featuring Isabelle Huppert and some product placed amongst some seemingly innocuous objects. Except on closer inspection – via ever-present social media sleuths – one stack of documents were Supreme Court rulings on child pornography, and another featured a diploma with a name that happens to also be that of a convicted abuser. The result was a Balenciaga bomb going off at the heart of the Kering conglomerate, with celebrity denouncements from avid fans like Kim Kardashian, who said on her Instagram stories and on Twitter that she was 'shaken' by the images, and subsequent apologies from the house. Then CEO Cédric Charbit said at the time; 'I want to personally reiterate my sincere apologies for the offence caused and take my responsibility.' The statement pointed out that a third party prop's company supplied the materials on the shoot in question.
In March this year, it was announced that Demna Gvasalia would be leaving Balenciaga. His destination, however, was a curveball; Kering choppering him into Gucci, its spangly jewel in the crown, a house of hi falutin glamour and those distinctive double G branded bags. Granted, Demna knows how to create buzz with logomania – although how much design nous it takes to emblazon your brand name across everything and anything is debatable – but Gucci's signature sense of seduction, throughout all of its iterations from Tom Ford to Alessandro Michele, isn't something Demna's dark arts dabble in.
His is a deliberately jarring, quirky-ugly aesthetic that doesn't seem to tally with what Gucci stands for. Time will tell whether the house that once sold us must-have bags and defined the 1990s (and early 2020s) fashion is ready for a darkly turbulent aesthetic. Granted, Balenciaga couture can make some exceptionally beautiful clothes – as exhibited on the Cannes red carpet by Balenciaga ambassador Isabelle Huppert – but that's the rarity rather than the rule. Balenciaga is set to be taken over by Pier Paolo Piccioli, an Italian designer known for his sense of romance and feminine exuberance.
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26 minutes ago
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The Independent
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