PARIS — When Pierpaolo Piccioli arrived at Balenciaga as its new artistic director in June, his predecessor Demna was nonetheless working within the model’s Avenue George V salons getting ready a ultimate high fashion present.
“For a month we shared the space, the people, everything. It was a first. I’m proud of that.” Piccioli remembers. His ensuing girls’s ready-to-wear debut in October, put collectively in simply six weeks, paid homage each to Cristóbal Balenciaga’s archive in addition to Demna’s extra futuristic, street-style knowledgeable contributions to the model. “It was important to have a sort of ‘passing the torch’ and not to deny what has been done before,” Piccioli stated.
Three months later, that spirit of continuity lives on within the model’s newest assortment — at the least on paper. Piccioli’s males’s and girls’s pre-fall assortment, unveiled Thursday, blends archival couture with denims and hoodies, athletic put on, sneakers and reinterpreted City and Rodeo purses — checking all of the bins when it comes to what’s anticipated from a industrial lookbook at Balenciaga. And but Piccioli’s personal contact has grow to be unmistakable all through: with softer, much less radical shapes and a gentler perspective declaring a brand new chapter for the model.
“It’s a new way of seeing the same thing. You keep the medium while changing the message,” he stated. “It’s less cynical, more human, lighter.”
The feedback herald a transparent shift for Balenciaga, which is in search of to construct on its present enterprise whereas steadily distancing itself from the ironic, darkish sensibility that had powered gross sales for greater than a decade beneath Demna.
Piccioli’s pre-fall assortment seeks to bridge sports activities and sartorialism. Classic ivory and navy peacoats get a style replace from rounded shoulders or outsized buttons moderately than distressed finishes or dramatically outsized proportions. A barn jacket subtly calls again to mid-century couture with its geometric bell form. Death-metal merch motifs persist on hoodies and tees, however are styled with a shirt and black tie (a Piccioli signature). Track fits come to mind not in an ironic, “naughty aughties” method however as a pure design reference — a zippered jacket with distinction piping is paired with a billowing pleated skirt. Tailoring is relaxed, not outsized — together with a jacket based mostly on Cristóbal’s personal blazers, the one identified menswear piece by the designer.
Piccioli is a dedicated lover of traditional style pictures, often preferring to depend on the dream projected by iconic photos moderately than the precise archival designs. That methodology comes throughout clearly within the lookbook shot by Robin Galiegue and styled by Joe McKenna, which manages to counsel a couture lineage even for stretch exercise gear with its clear visible nods to titans of mid-century style pictures like Rawlings, Bourdin, Avedon and Penn.
The flat have an effect on of the model’s Demna-era muses is substituted for a brand new forged of hotter faces, lots of them at dwelling in gender-fluid styling that feels much less edgy than romantic. We see recurring Piccioli fashions like Achol Kuir and Agel Akol; musicians Juyeon, Laufey and Eliot Sumner; actor Benjamin Voisin. One of them even flashes a broad smile — defying the style cliché (immortalised in “Triangle of Sadness”) that fashions ought to solely look pleased at mass-market manufacturers.
“I think the cynical and the dark world is no longer young. It’s for pretending to be younger. There’s nothing worse than trying to be cool and not just being yourself,” Piccioli stated.
Provocation takes on a unique that means because the Parisian home identified for its extreme couture volumes pronounces its new “TechWear” line with a long-sleeved exercise jumpsuit, lower out on each side like a monokini. The look is styled with crystal-embellished stilettos from a brand new collaboration with Manolo Blahnik, taking the season’s themes of “street formal” and “sports sartorial” to an excessive.
The TechWear items — a few of which function nun-like hoods recalling Cristóbal’s spiritual motifs — are actual efficiency clothes, Piccioli says. Others mix references to sport and couture: a boxing gown crossed with a shawl-collared opera coat, Balenciaga’s iconic using hats reimagined as flat-brimmed basketball lids. There are additionally basketball jerseys and varsity jackets because the model will get able to announce a brand new collaboration with the NBA.
In addition to feeding Balenciaga’s merchandising wants, Piccioli says the insistence on sports activities all through the gathering is supposed to perform on a number of ranges. First, there’s a documentary intention: a need to talk about the way in which younger persons are always mixing-and-matching formal, road and athletic put on all through the day. (That non-prescriptive styling seems like an echo of Celine — each Hedi Slimane’s Spring/Summer 2021 homage to Gen Z or newer efforts to broaden its definition of particular person model beneath Michael Rider. The key distinction for Piccioli, nevertheless, is that the place many designers are speaking about altering modes of gown by means of curation of present wardrobe staples, he and his workforce are counting on contemporary design.)
Then there’s a strategic push to position the physique on the centre of Balenciaga’s message: Even Cristóbal’s most sculptural couture items have been all the time lower across the physique, suspended in ways in which created surprising quantity from inside, Piccioli says. Concealment was typically the end result, however not the purpose. Thus the introduction of body-hugging athletic kinds amidst the sculptural couture references. “I want to get back to the culture of couture as care, as having a conversation with the body,” he stated. “Young people in particular think a lot about taking care of the body.”
Piccioli can also be drawn to the thought of athletic achievement as an important equaliser, erasing social boundaries. ”Sports is a option to categorical values like integrity and equality. When you exit on the sphere or the courtroom, you may break the foundations of social assertion, of id, of tradition. You solely have the way in which you play, with your personal individuality. You don’t carry a heritage or the rest with you.”
That final level is indicative — each of the pressure of Piccioli’s imaginative and prescient and why it represents such a break with what got here earlier than. At Valentino, too, Piccioli used style as a option to transcend social context. Dignifying our bodies by means of couture was positioned as a common, humanist endeavor.
Balenciaga, alternatively, has fuelled its momentum by tackling style’s social context head on: the model powered fast-growing, tribal demand with its willingness to take uncomfortable stances on style, class, consumption and ugliness, positioning its wearers as uniquely self-aware.
But as that method has delivered diminishing returns, the model is at a crossroads: Should Balenciaga try to stay a button-pushing arbiter of cool, or set off to overcome a brand new (and maybe much less fickle) tribe?
Owner Kering has stated Balenciaga’s new designer might want to reaffirm the model’s couture heritage whereas persevering with to construct on its present enterprise. Navigating that twin mandate whereas concurrently discovering one’s personal voice within the model is a puzzle.
Time will inform whether or not Piccioli’s resolution — sticking to the construction of present collections whereas overhauling its values and message — resonates out there. While first adopters and style insiders could proceed to count on extra radical messaging, there’s seemingly an extended tail of consumers who’re merely shopping for the product, and may as quickly splurge for chunky luxurious sneakers with out the dystopian overtones.
“My world is for sure lighter, more human, more about persons and less about ‘characters,’” Piccioli stated. “It’s about building a language, building a path. It’s creating a community of people who share values through clothes.”