Balenciaga’s nonchalance, Viktor & Rolf’s craftsmanship

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Now in its third day, the Parisian fashion world is finally trying again. “No one needs couture, but couture is the experience of wearing clothes,” Demna said at the end of the show. Balenciaga: The fourth since the reopening of the Avenue George V studio, the least archival, closest to his personal sensibility, rather dark and full of obscurities from various subcultures.

Demna has returned to the same aesthetic that has been in the brand’s ready-to-wear for years, modified with the technicality and virtuosity of haute couture, as well as gestures and mannerisms. The result is both fascinating and repulsive. It fascinates with its modernized verve, in a season that is all about preservation, about the attention paid to the behind. It’s fascinating because it manages to blend visions born in the streets or underground with the most absolute elitism, for example, concert T-shirts lined with scuba silk and hand-painted, and so on are jeans, but obviously their meaning and reason for existence have not changed, even if the sleeves are 3/4 length and the silhouette is cocooned. What’s worrying is that the idea that haute couture contributes to the aesthetic education of the customer has been largely abandoned: here we are targeting those who already buy Balenciaga but with higher spending power.

It refuses because Demner, almost in defense of himself, accuses Cristóbal of a strict aesthetic continuity, but also a creator who moves around a compact core of ideas and who seems to have given up on exploring other nuances of his world, bogged down in reiterating tropes that are now exhausted. Yet one admires the power of creation, and the effect of these clothes in that room is a kind of rough and rugged monumentalism. Yet the rigidity is overwhelming.

As for stiffness Viktor and Rolf They certainly don’t joke, but they also have a sense of humor that is ironic and derisive, which is rare in fashion today. For the Dutch duo, fashion is the realm of pure creative expression, without real commercial implications, which allows them to give free rein to their imagination. What always surprises is the quality of the execution, so high that it avoids carnival in favor of conceptual works. This time it’s a boxy, sharp volume, a parallelepiped shape of Lego, somewhere between SpongeBob and Claus Nomi, with lots of acrylic colors and sequins, and a little bit of Cinzia Ruggeri and Liquid Sky to mix it all together. The result is edgy and hilarious.

and Jean Paul Gaultier Haute CoutureFinally, the guest designer for this season is the capable Nicolas Di Felice, who has contributed to Courreges’ recent success. The encounter between Di Felice’s sharp and uninhibited sensibility with Parisian irreverence and Gaultier’s corsetry is a fusion of architecture and seduction, resolved through liquefied forms that open and reveal, together with used bra hooks to create curtains and embroidered elements, masculine tailoring incorporated into spiral windings, while veiled glasses conceal the face but allow it to be seen in a transparent way: “I didn’t want to reproduce Gaultier’s stylistic features – explains Di Felice – but to pay tribute to the spirit of the brand, that in Paris you can be whatever you want.”