Topics like wealth and income inequality are surely ripe for the plucking, and, as Demna asserted - as countless artists and novelists have - money is the prime mover if not fetish.
He has also redefined how to modernize a historic Paris couture house.īut considering the reach of the power-dressing show, this one - the first New York presentation by the brand in roughly 20 years - felt more like capitalism lite. No other designer in recent times has expanded the possibilities of a fashion show - visually, emotionally - more than Demna. That show happened just after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and Demna spoke movingly about his family’s own experiences in his native Georgia. I mean, for example, the fantastically original 2020 show about power dressing (set in a government-style assembly chamber) the wonderfully witty spring 2022 “Red Carpet” show, with a Balenciaga film by The Simpsons creators and the truly disturbing fall 2022 show that recreated the image of people struggling against wind and snow in a vast, empty landscape. And, as Demna, the creative director of Balenciaga, observed afterward in the backstage, “a show on Wall Street is sort of iconic.” Tell that to Oliver Stone, Martin Scorsese, and Mike Nichols, whose 1988 film “Working Girl,” with costumes by the great Ann Roth, could have been a cunning source for a Demna’s latest collection.Īlthough it was thrilling to visit the trading floor (it’s smaller than I had imagined), the show itself didn’t produce the charge or tension of some of Demna’s previous performances. The winners and losers, accompanied just lately by standard images of grim-faced traders. It’s a fashion show set against one of the most familiar images in the world - the digital boards of the New York Stock Exchange. It’s hilarious.īut sinister? Dystopian? Not really.
Not only do the gimp suits completely eradicate all forms of identity, the models’ mouths have been reduced to tiny blow holes and their huge fake eyelashes flutter out like weeds escaping a crack in the grimy sidewalk. Sunday on the trading floor of the New York Stock Exchange, and the Balenciaga models are wearing bondage suits under their corporate suits and pussy-bow blouses. Photo-Illustration: The Cut Photos: Balenciaga