After fleeing war as a child, designer Georgia Demna made fashion a battlefield of provocative ideas under the leadership of Balenciaga. It was a huge success – until it wasn’t.
The 41-year-old, who dropped the last name Gvasalia in 2021, returned to the catwalk at Paris Fashion Week on Sunday for the first time since her hot streak ended at the end of last year with what she considered ill publicity. campaign.
The ad features children wearing teddy bear bags that have buttons and belts – ostensibly to create a punk aesthetic but look like slave gear.
It coincided with another ad campaign that included a strange background detail – a print-out of a US Supreme Court ruling on child pornography.
Demna apologized profusely on the pages of Vogue, denying any intention to refer to child abuse, but the damage was done, with a slump in the fourth quarter of sales and criticism from celebrity friends such as Kim Kardashian.
He promised to eliminate provocations.
“I have decided to return to the color in fashion as well as to the color of Balenciaga, which makes quality clothes – does not create images or buzz,” said Vogue.
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‘Infinite Creation’
It was an unexpected moment of regret for the designer who was named among the 100 most influential people in the world by Time less than a year ago.
Demna is on thin ice: “We are allowed to make mistakes in a group like Kering,” said the boss of Balenciaga’s parent company, Francois-Henri Pinault. “We have no right to make two.”
He also barely escaped the contagion of the controversy surrounding his friend Kanye West, who opened Balenciaga’s last show in Paris in September. The label cut ties with the rapper after an outburst about Jews.
Previously, Demna’s fun and inventive campaigns had made Balenciaga one of the hottest brands.
The 2021 show saw guests arrive on the red carpet and were then treated to a film at the entrance which showed the models quietly mingling amongst themselves, wearing the new collection.
One campaign was run in the style of a dystopian newscast; others play with the tropes of reality TV.
The daring designs include the head-to-toe black shroud Kardashian wore to the Met Gala in 2021.
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“The unbridled creation has worked well but it needs to be tamed down a little,” said Arnaud Cadart, from the Flornoy Ferri fashion consultancy.
An evil luxury
It’s going to be a tough reinvention, not least because one of Demna’s tricks is turning the ugly into luxury, from discarded Crocs to the famous $1,500 trash bag.
“Demna uses a radical approach to overturn stereotypes of what is normal and what is luxury,” said Serge Carreira, a fashion expert at Sciences Po University in Paris.
It’s an approach that works, attracting all sorts of stars from cerebral French actor Isabelle Huppert to annoying US rapper Cardi B.
There is a fun background as well.
A year ago, Demna’s Paris show collapsed in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, recalling her traumatic departure from Georgia as a 12-year-old, forced to flee ethnic cleansing by pro-Russian separatists.
The show saw dressed-up models walk out in an artificial blizzard, carrying their infamous garbage bags.
Some find the taste unpleasant but it is very well tasted.
The invasion “caused the pain of a past trauma that I have lived with since 1993, when the same thing happened in my country and I became a refugee forever”, he said.
Trained at the Beaux-Arts Royal Academy in Belgium, Demna worked for Maison Margiela and Louis Vuitton before creating his own label, Vetements, with his brother in 2014.
He was appointed creative director at Balenciaga in 2015.
For years, her trauma has affected her work, but she told Vanity Fair in 2021 that counseling, meditation and exercise have helped banish her demons.
“Fashion used to be like a war for me. That’s why there is a lot of aggression and darkness in my actions. Today I feel at peace with the system,” he said.
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