STYLE

By Pema Bakshi

2 October 2024

PFW: Fashion With A POV At Balenciaga Spring/Summer 2025

At Demna's dinner table, nostalgia and "mess" make for rich inspiration.

From Daniel Roseberry’s nods to Elsa Schiaparelli to Kim Jones’ centennial celebration at Fendi, this season has seen many designers pay homage to history. Over a transformative nine years at Balenciaga, Demna has also sought to honour the house’s founder, Cristóbal Balenciaga. But for Spring/Summer 2025, he looked to his own origin story, tracing it all the way back to where his spark for design was first ignited.

In Paris, the show took place in a dark room, with an extended wooden dining table serving as the runway—lined with ‘dinner guests’ like Nicole Kidman and Katy Perry, of course. As shared in his brief shownotes, it was at his grandmother’s table that the creative director first struck up a love of clothes. As a young boy in Georgia, he would find himself getting crafty with design,

“My earliest memories of fashion start with me drawing looks on cardboard, cutting them out, and making fashion shows,’” he wrote. “Thirty-five years later, this show reconnects me to the beginning of my vision.”

Models first appeared in sheer body stockings embroidered with ‘lingerie’, as if about to be dressed with these clip-on pieces. From there, Demna’s trademark mischief played out with exaggerated silhouettes: cocoon bombers that referenced Cristóbal’s signatures, Medici collars that extended up from corsets “engineered into the neckline”, dresses crafted as if made from wrapped-up leather jackets, and his inflated version of power shoulders. Further down, a collection of more demure pussy-bow midi dresses in chiffon and velvet made their way down the runway, grunge-d up with accessories, and balanced out via sets of bustiers and Balenciaga’s trusted ‘pantaleggings’.

Backstage, Demna spoke of mess. Or more so, bucking against the hyper-curation that he sees in fashion. Instead, the designer puts forward creativity with crafts. His perspective.

“It’s a tribute to fashion that has a point of view.”