A SHOW OF SOLIDARITY WITH UKRAINE, BALENCIAGA'S LATEST SET HARNESSED THE POWER OF PHYSICAL SPACE
Photo Thyago Sainte
09 mar 2022, for frame
Location
Carrefour Charles Lindbergh, 93350 Le Bourget, France
Design, Production
Brand
Music
The fashion house installed a machine-made blizzard within a Paris exhibition hall, giving way to an apocalyptic scene with a deep message.
Key features
Balenciaga’s Winter 2022 collection was presented on an infinite, snowy white field, enclosed with a protective glass screen. It was staged at Hall 5 of the Paris-Le Bourget Exhibition Centre, which has 10-m-high, 40-m-wide sliding doors offering a total eclipse of daylight for all imaginable scenography. Before a machine-made winter took over the rink – and spectators' minds – the space was occupied by a single human voice. It was that of Balenciaga's creative director Demna Gvasalia, reading a work by poet Oleksandr Oles in Ukrainian. The soundtrack kicked off with classical music – French pianist David Kadouch’s rendition of Slavonic Dances in E Minor.
The path of the show was drawn in circles. Primarily dressed in black, insecurely stumbling in resistance to the storm, the models were sometimes barely visible in the blizzard, darkened with flashes of blue light. Halfway through, the music developed into a techno song entitled 360° and Storm by BFRND. The final looks interrupted the collection’s darkness, taking on the blue and yellow of Ukraine’s flag. The yellow garments symbolized Ukraine's golden wheat fields and the earth's richness; the blue the country’s sky, streams and mountains. Merging into the spatial design, the final dress became a stream and a flag, desperately and bravely winding long behind a disappearing human being.
Frame's take
According to Gvasalia, research and innovation will be critical for the unpredictable times ahead. Balenciaga has been one of the most innovative brands in recent years, successfully utilizing emerging technologies in its presentations and communications. However, the machine-made winter was the opposite of what was expected from Balenciaga, while other fashion brands made their stake in the Metaverse this season (the brand was notably a frontrunner in doing so by conceiving a video game for its Fall 2021 show).
Just as a souvenir snow globe preserves a memory, the Balenciaga fashion show mapped the archetype of ‘winter’ in today’s perception. While the set originally commented on climate change, it now reads like a prediction of the terrifying possibility of nuclear war. This is the strength of Demna Gvasalia as an artistic director: he can create an epiphenomenon alongside a fashion show. The secondary phenomenon that results from this latest Balenciaga presentation is the spirit of resistance and solidarity, rewritten by clothes and space.