There is no two ways about it, Balenciaga and Demna stand out in the past ten years as the brand who made fashion all about the right now. Not costume, not decoration but clothes for the moment. Mostly informed by Demna’s acute radar for what is happening in the world. When talking about fashion and politics then Balenciaga’s European Parliament show for S/S 2020 where the set was made up of giant European Union coloured blue curtains and carpets and the F/W 2022 one after the beginning of Russia’s Ukraine invasion stand out. First underlining the power of democracy with modern tailoring worthy of the highest office or addressing the humanitarian crisis caused by war with a winter storm runway set and models who were bracing the elements in blue and yellow swathed garments showed how much Demna has this innate talent to combine zeitgeist with of the moment tailoring. In fact, we dare to say nobody else has had that skill set in fashion where many designers look into old photo books for reference and it brought the brand Balenciaga to the very top of the industry also growing from barely 350 million Euros to over two billion Euros. 

Let’s remember: Demna studied international economics at Tbilisi State University before he enrolled in Antwerp’s Royal Academy of Fine Arts, graduating with a master’s degree in fashion design in 2006, going on to work for Walter Van Beirendonck, Margiela and Louis Vuitton before founding Vetements with his brother Guram in 2014, and assuming the helm of Balenciaga in 2015. Hence, he did not start out from a pure fashion background and his family were refugees from Georgia who ended up in Germany near Düsseldorf. So, this very modern CV informed the creative output. Maybe it was the first major Eastern culture dictates Western fashion moment? But in the last moments of Demna’a tenure at the brand the heat went missing a bit, the connection to now. Ever since the child abuse advertising scandal and the initial poor reaction of firing the production company, the Balenciaga universe has been all about the association with international celebrities: the Kardashians, Kanye (ok, a while ago now), Nicole Kidman, Isabelle Huppert and Cardi B. No surprise that Demna was spending more of his time in Los Angeles, the cradle of the celeb cult and not Paris. 

If we attempt a symbolic explanation, we must only look at the artfully decayed T-shirt with open seams and holes which Demna chose to wear when he received the French medal of honor from Rachida Dati, France’s minister of culture recently. In a way, the brand has taken expensive clothes with holes in them to whole new heights. It elevates easily wearable garments (hoodies) into fetishistic fashion objects with innovative proportions through extreme savoir-faire. We hear that holes are made by hand in the Italian factories effectively treated like Savile Row hand-stitched buttonholes. But his mash up of realism with Haute Couture seems to have grown old now. His final Couture show for the French Maison last month felt like a best-of of his signatures for the house, which made sense, but left everyone longing for the big exit moment that was to be expected. Because as written in the beginning of this text, curating moments is what he excells at. 

It’s likely though his head is already fully engulfed in the Gucci universe, for which he will officially present his first collection early next year. It’s hard to tell yet what to expect from this appointment, except from some slight Demna-isms already crawling their way into the Gucci Fall Winter 2025 campaign. Monotone backdrop, all the models could have walked a Balenciaga runway in the last decade, slightly disheveld hair and a cold and cool glare into the camera. Also, something tells us he will have his fingers in the September show in Milan as well.