Balenciaga gets something right about "how to fix fashion week"

Digital notes from his Paris show

Two things seem to be true right now. The first, which is more obvious, is that fashion shows don’t serve the same purpose they used to. For years, the thinkers of this industry have been trying to figure out how to make shows relevant — but really, I think, productive — again. Maybe the focus has been too much on what has changed or gone wrong and that has made it more difficult to settle into the fact that the point of the show has changed.

It used to be that the world of fashion revolved around the biannual fashion week season. These seasons were like a canopy that informed the plans stores and magazines/newspapers would make for the following year. We needed the shows because of the indelible truth of it all — that at the center of fashion are garments. But now, there are many more scalable ways to access the garments because of the various conveniences that the modern internet has made possible. So that’s one thing.

The second thing that seems to be true is that fundamentally, we don’t want to give up fashion week. Following a pandemic that could have given the industry every reason to stop doing shows, the traveling seasons have returned with a vigor and a bang. For whatever the reason — that it’s a community building event, a human touchpoint in an overly-digitized world for an industry that trades on the spiritual value of beauty, a happening that keeps afloat many of the sub-industries within fashion that have developed around show-season, or simply the biggest marketing moment for many brands — it seems that we want it to stay.

So, with these two truths, the question of how to fix fashion week actually becomes a question of how to use fashion week. I think Balenciaga’s Demna Gvasalia understands this better than most.

He showed a Fall 2022 collection in Paris yesterday, though that it was a collection for Fall 2022 matters less than what he did.

His runway was used to encapsulate his feelings on the present moment, harkening to the unfortunate reality of an erratically changing climate, with large garbage bags in the hands of most models, possibly capturing the despair of displacement. (As of yesterday, it’s been reported that 1.5 million people have fled Ukraine, representing the largest exodus in Europe since the second world war.)

The show ended with two monochrome looks — one set in yellow and the other in blue, the colors of Ukraine’s flag.

What was so interesting about his use of the runway is that while the presence of clothes mattered (without them, the medium would not have made sense), whether this was a Fall or Spring or pre- collection really didn’t. The clothes on display were more like an instrument, and that let them play the part of best supporting role instead of lead actor, which perfectly summates, in my opinion, the real power of clothes.

While the most cynical among us may reject fashion altogether, calling it trivial or frivolous or in extreme cases harmful, the most enthusiastic may well forget that clothes don’t make for a great lead character. That actually, as Diana Vreeland once said, “it’s the life you live in the dress.” A great suit won’t get you a job, but it could help you unlock enough confidence to really nail the interview going in. Somewhere between complete dismissal of fashion and putting too much power into its hands is actually the sweet spot where it can thrive with integrity.

I think Gvasalia understands this. And as it relates to fashion week, he seems to recognize that putting the clothes front and center is still the objective, but not for the sake of selling them. This is what showroom appointments are for, what lookbooks can do, what salesfloors do do.

The opportunity on tap with a fashion show today is less about thinking so intently about selling the clothes, or making them the main event but really about using them as an instrument to get a point across.

Of course, depending on the creative director in question, this point will vary immensely. Gvasalia has a gift for distilling the energy of the cultural moment and offering it up with no apology, or compensatory message of relief. It can be quite uncomfortable to reckon with and in some ways, that is its gift to the audience (an opportunity to unpack the discomfort and do something with it) but again, depending on the brand and the creative at its helm, the point of view that’s being prioritized is no doubt going to change. Is supposed to be different, in fact.

A designer like Phoebe Philo, for example, whose gift is really for tapping into and accommodating the second-order needs of a woman might take the directive to reconsider the point of her show and spin out an experience that barely touches upon current events but is equally as resonant and relevant. What’s honest to a creative’s process and purpose seems to be the key here in turning the lock.

This is mostly to say that after years of manic energy circumnavigating the existential questions around fashion’s role moving forward, the dust may be starting to settle, with leaders of The New Way showing themselves through the risks that they take with their work.