Balenciaga Fall 2023 Sees Demna Inch Closer to His Former Signatures
With voluminous puffers, exaggerated suit jackets and face-shielding sunglasses, the controversy-ridden label looks to move forward as itself.
Post the word “Balenciaga” online, and you’ll stir heated conversations about the infamous advertising campaigns responsible for the Demna-led brand’s downfall at the tail-end of last year. The controversial imagery sparked one of the largest internet uproars in fashion history, pumping TikTok’s #CANCELBALENCIAGA hashtag with videos of former fans cutting up their Balenciaga bags, burning the label’s Speed Trainers and removing logo posters from their walls — all of which amassed more than 300 million views.
But in 2023, the defamed label is looking to repair the damage done to its name — and move forward. After sitting down with Vogue to tell all, subsequently returning to the runway and later releasing a slew of capsule collections, Balenciaga has put out its first official lookbook since the catastrophic debacle, for Fall 2023.
The sartorial delivery appears related to the collection that debuted during Balenciaga’s Winter 2023 show in March, which saw Demna strip things back to the fundamentals of fashion, looking not at design as “entertainment,” but rather as “the art of making clothes.” This latest lookbook is significantly less dieted than what walked that runway, though it still resides distant from the far-out experimentation that Balenciaga was previously famous for.
Here, Demna-isms return with much greater force. Puffers and varsity jackets play with volume and materiality; parkas become wraps, and reconstructed suit jackets are enlarged with double-over designs and padding. In line with former signatures, sunglasses shield half the face, and footwear embraces exaggeration.
Overall, the range sees Balenciaga take a careful-yet-bold step toward its past. Managing not to cause a ruckus with anything too outlandish, the familiar imagery is an elementary attempt from Demna to move the brand back into fashion’s main circle.
See Balenciaga’s Fall 2023 collection in the lookbook above.
In more fashion news, Dua Lipa co-designed Versace’s next collection with Donatella.
