We think fashion changes really fast, but does it, actually?” All that black, for a start: It may have been the subversive uniform of the ’90s, but it’s also a signifier of Cristóbal Balenciaga’s ultra-elevated haute couture. “We were coming up with things in the studio that could have been 30 years ago, but they look just as good today. Designing as if in a time warp threw up lots of philosophical questions about the pace of fashion, he said. Not too young to form a whole-life commitment to thinking about clothes, though-or to set out on the route where he can end up at 40, having a great time playing around with the full ’90s-retro treatment: a look book of Polaroids, a film by the quintessential director Harmony Korine, and a faked-up video cassette marked “Balenciaga: The Lost Tape.” “It’s like discovering a show that never happened-it was a blurry period for Balenciaga, before Nicolas Ghesquière arrived.”īut back to the content.

Obviously, Demna can’t really remember all the ins and outs of fashion in those days either. Fashion was dirtier, nastier, and fun then, not filtered and behaved and polished and proper and seen on every single platform as it is now.” “People have forgotten that era because you can’t really search it. “The ’90s are the decade in which I realized I loved fashion,” he declared on the phone from Paris. Mostly black and bristling with attitude, this pre-collection looks a bit like what Demna imagines that analog era felt like, while simultaneously being 100% recognizable as 2022 Balenciaga, of course. That was the pre-internet, post-grunge time when the only permitted fashion color was black, the only goal was being cool, and when illegal warehouse raves-and deconstruction and minimalism and underground and guerrilla fashion shows-were so good. The Balenciaga news is that Demna (as he now wishes to be called) is rewinding the clock to the mid-to-late ’90s.

Pinnacle studio 14 question mark