As Demna after Gucci, a look back at his incredible work for Balenciaga in Vogue

Speaking of Demna means speaking of revolution. The designer, born in Georgian, is about bricks and polemics for padded hips and open excerpts and turned fashion upside down. When the now named talent from Balenciaga writes back to Gucci, it is time to take its legacy from his legacy and look back on his work, as it was in fashion.

In order to understand the effects of Demas work, it is necessary to put them in the context of the brand that was commissioned. Cristóbal Balenciaga, born in the village of Gefaria, Spain, the son of a fisherman and a seamstress, became a pope-like figure in the Paris couture. Even Coco Chanel, who was not known for it, to speak flatteringly of other designers, respected him. “The others are designs or copists, otherwise they are inspired people or even geniuses, but Balenciaga alone is a couturier. He is the only one who can design, cut and sew a suit or dress alone, ”she told Paris Match in 1951.

When he was appointed artistic director of Balenciaga in 2015, Demna was a relative unknown. As a graduate of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp, he worked in Maison Margiela and behind the scenes in Louis Vuitton before performing anonymously with his brother Guram Gvasalia in 2014. And he too is a practical manufacturer, a man who drapes rather than drawing who once told the critic Sarah Mower that he had initiated a “one-minute-to-can-Create-a-Dres challenge in the studio”.

Nevertheless, the relationship with time – and time – is almost completely different from the house founder. The Spanish civil war brought Monsieur Balenciaga from Spain to Paris, and although he preferred austerity measures in design and his way of life, the couturier lived in a rare world of luxury. The reserved couturier, who was only sitting for an interview, retired in 1968 when the position of the couture questioned the position of the couture. In contrast, Demna, who was forced to flee from Soviet Georgia and knew first-hand, apparently had the emergency of the refugees in his autumn 2022 Ready-to-Wear collection, in which models were difficult to find their way through wind and snow in a closed set.

This was an open political statement by a designer who was not afraid of the taboo, quotidian, camp, kitsch or queer (lay’s potato chips, plastic waste bags, sweatshes, crocs), and which hugged the beautiful with as much beacon as the awkward person. Demna told Vogue Runway from his Vibe debut for autumn 2016: “It was the attitude and attitude and Cristóbal Art to work with the body that I found interesting.” From Cristóbal, Demna solved fantastic volumes, movement elements and relationships and the purity of the silhouette both in the ready-to-wear and in the couture, which he had recovered in autumn 2021. Demna applied Couture techniques to everyday clothing such as buffers, and he introduced the basics of wardrobe such as jeans and sweat into the couture and constantly emphasized our ideas about what fashion, status and luxury are.