Balenciaga: The Brutal Clash Between Chaos and Poetry

 

Demna didn't just lead Balenciaga for a decade, Demna created an entire era of avant garde relevance for the legendary house of Cristóbal Balenciaga.

While maintaining ties to Cristóbal's legacy, Gvasalia managed to imprint his personal mark, transforming the house into something entirely different: a provocative, unique brand that added to Cristóbal's heritage all the disruptive energy he had already built with Vetements. Under his direction, Balenciaga shone in a way few luxury brands have achieved and embedded itself in everyone's mind, both inside and outside the industry.

Balenciaga became the vanguard of sociological hyperrealism. Gvasalia's vision turned mundane or ordinary details into high fashion: it was about taking real street clothes straight to the runway, elevating streetwear to haute couture with precision. Balenciaga was luxury mocking luxury, luxury disguised as anti luxury. Garments that looked worn, pulled from a stranger's closet, high couture deconstructed through pieces that seemed to come from garage sales or second-hand shops in Eastern Europe. Ugliness taken to its maximum expression and turned into an object of desire and cultural demolition.

Gvasalia imprinted on Balenciaga his critique of consumerism and the fashion industry, not very subtly. His artistic vision was pure subversion. He didn't aim to please. He aimed to discomfort, to make people think, and yes, to go viral with controversy as his main fuel. And it worked. With Gvasalia, Balenciaga achieved massive success, something not every radical experiment can guarantee.

After Demna announced his departure from Balenciaga to move to Gucci, the arrival of Pierpaolo Piccioli in 2025, coming from Valentino, became a true bombshell in the world of haute couture. Piccioli had his own glorious era at that house, though his DNA couldn't be further from Gvasalia's. From the start, Piccioli was declared the last great romantic of haute couture, and it's not an exaggerated title.

His vision is deeply poetic and humanist. His obsession is beauty, but not as decoration, rather as a language. For Piccioli, the beauty of his designs is the medium through which he conveys emotions and values. It's his way of expressing humanity and vulnerability, and that's exactly what has made his style unique over the years. Piccioli has also proven to be a lover of color. Under his direction at Valentino, Valentino Red and PP Pink became iconic, not to decorate, but to communicate. His great inspirations during that period came from sculpture, literature, and painting.

The contrast between Gvasalia's corrosive style and Piccioli's poetic style is brutal and requires little analysis. While Gvasalia sought to create conversation and controversy, Piccioli seeks to create poetry and renew Cristóbal's tradition from a completely different place. I see it as a mission that feels almost impossible after the enormous void left by Demna. But if Pierpaolo succeeds, we would be witnessing a total renewal of the brand and the reconquest of those pre Gvasalia era followers who long for the artistic and architectural vision of the old Balenciaga.

Piccioli's vision is kinder and more accessible than Demna's, which is already a shock for those who grew up with the disruptive aesthetic of the last ten years. At the same time, it's inevitable to recognize that the radical essence that propelled Balenciaga for a decade left with Demna. Cultural critique is not part of Piccioli's proposal. The question that remains floating is direct and without an easy answer: Will Piccioli's poetic humanism be able to take Balenciaga to the stratosphere as Demna did? Demna, now at Gucci, has opted for characters (La Famiglia). Piccioli has gone in the opposite direction, choosing individuals (Winona Ryder, Harry Dickinson, Hudson Williams, and Labrinth).

Balenciaga has said goodbye to its radical phase. A more romantic and sophisticated vision has arrived. But does Balenciaga really want to enter a phase of maturity? Will new enthusiasts join Piccioli's Balenciaga en masse, or will those faithful to Gvasalia's disruptive experiments desert? The underlying issue is whether Balenciaga fully embraces its poetic phase and whether it is willing to stop being the dangerous brand it was for ten years.