At Balenciaga’s spring 2025 show inside the Cour du Dôme des Invalides in Paris on Monday, there was no runway. Instead, those who would normally be clustered in the front row sat at a polished wooden table, on rickety mismatched chairs that looked straight from one of Paris’s famous flea markets. It all made for a very fancy dinner party, or bad jokes about “serving”—Lindsay Lohan, gleaming in black sequins, sat across from Kyle MacLachlan, who was right near Salma Hayek, Future, Rachel Sennott, and Kim Petras and Katy Perry, who entered the show holding hands. Suddenly, the table transformed into a runway—and also a very sexy table, the kind where you sweep the plates off with your arm before doing something dirty.
The collection kicked off with a bang: Balenciaga’s famed mononymous creative director, Demna, presented skin-tone bodysuits with tromp l’oeil lingerie detailing, paired with his trademark “pantashoes,” with garter-inspired trim. It was a rollicking start, especially when factoring in an enormous fur coat straight out of Casino, or that episode of Sex and the City where Samantha sleeps with Charlotte’s doorman. But the show hit an even higher point with the next series of looks. There were silk dresses (one with knife-pleated skirts, similar to previous Demna collections) but with a major twist—the backs of the garments, from neck to knee, were cut open, tied together with black, wide, corset-style ribbons. The effect was Victory Garden meets Hot Topic, and it was fabulous. Balenciaga described the dresses as “backless.” It was the most creative showcase for butt cheeks I’ve seen this season.
Demna wrote in his show notes (scanned after being scribbled on a yellow legal pad, for a homey feel), that as a child, he would draw clothes on pieces of cardboard, cut them out, and make fashion shows at his grandmother’s table. “Thirty-five years later, this show reconnects me to the beginning of my vision,” he wrote. “It’s a tribute to fashion that has a point of view.”
This collection felt like a sharpened assertion of Demna’s strong point of view, with many of his hits cranked up to a new level. There was neoprene, a “scuba” Sith Lord-like gown, pantaboots cut from impossibly low-waist jeans, supersized wraparound sunglasses, and comically layered heaps of garments (the house’s take on “fashion victims”) which were all instantly recognizable Demna. But more felt striking and new, like the bustier “frames” that wrapped around the body like a slap bracelet, or the leather coats that transformed into dresses, or the “Medici-style” stand collars made out of five-pocket denim, or even the Hollister-esque polos.
Demna is brilliant at combining his own aesthetic with Balenciaga codes—references to house founder Cristóbal Balenciaga included the silhouette of the scuba gown and the “buttoning stance” on jackets. But Balenciaga worked in a completely silent atelier, and this show was loud, in every sense. The soundtrack by BFRND, Demna’s husband, began with Amy Irving’s cover of “Why Don’t You Do Right?” from the Who Framed Roger Rabbit soundtrack, before transitioning into a smoky remix of Britney Spears’s “Gimme More.” Petras was mouthing the lyrics the whole time, and so was I.
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