Can Balenciaga and Under Armour Find Common Ground?
Ahead of its Spring 2025 runway on Thursday, the Demna-led label has teased a new collaboration with the sportswear brand that could benefit them both.
A silver hoop earring shaped after Under Armour’s logo wouldn’t be the first thing Balenciaga fans predict to see in the brand’s Spring 2025 collection, but neither would a shoe box-turned-clutch — so maybe the label is back to its old gimmicks after all. Call it a return to form, or label it straight-up kooky; either way, Balenciaga’s Under Armour collaboration is very much real, and perhaps it could be the moment that finally pushes the tame sportswear brand into the eyes of stylephiles.
Just ahead of its Spring 2025 runway in Shanghai on Thursday, Balenciaga took to Instagram to share a selection of wild creations from the forthcoming collection—sock-knit sandals and sky-high platform sneakers among them. Under Armour’s logo currently glares from the high-fashion brand’s feed, centered on a sleek, cut-out silver earring with Balenciaga’s label engraved on the back. “For pierced ears,” the imprint confirmed in the caption.
View this post on Instagram
For the record, the sporty accessory is only the teaser for Balenciaga’s Spring 2025 line, so there’s no saying how far its Under Armour collaboration will go just yet. A ready-to-wear line of co-branded workout gear certainly isn’t out of the question, nor is a fleshed-out range of logo-laden jewelry. Thursday’s runway will tell all.
Under Armour’s brand identity is not one akin to fashion week’s antics. But that’s not to say it has not tested the runway: in 2018, the brand trotted down Palm Angels’ catwalk in Milan as the brand’s central Spring 2019 collaborator. The sportswear imprint’s bread and butter, however, is traditional performance gear, and its splashiest products as of late are dribbling across basketball courts, thanks to a fruitful partnership with Golden State Warriors point guard Stephen Curry.
The brand’s Balenciaga collaboration will certainly capture the zeitgeist with a different demographic than it’s used to, even if the product lineup comes as one of Demna’s parodic plays. However, it’s important to note that, in the aftermath of Balenciaga’s reputation-ruining campaigns in 2022, Demna sat down with Vogue and promised to ditch his former kitsch: “I will have a more mature and serious approach to everything I release as an idea or an image. I have decided to go back to my roots in fashion as well as to the roots of Balenciaga, which is making quality clothes – not making image or buzz.”
One might call the brand’s Fall 2024 runway, where an Erewhon collaboration and a flashy Cardi B runway appearance claimed major headlines, the antithesis to that statement; but if there’s any truth to Demna’s words, perhaps his Under Armour team-up is a bid for an earnest stake in sportswear — or at least something more substantial than grocery paraphernalia — that could earn him back (a little more) trust from a few. Nonetheless, it’ll likely benefit the Under Armour brand’s status, one that could harness more eyes from a contemporary lift (especially while many cannot forget that its CEO Kevin Plank endorsed President Donald Trump in 2017), too.
See the teaser for the collaboration above, and stay tuned to Hypebeast to see Balenciaga’s Spring 2025 show, which is schedule to take place on Thursday, May 30, at 1:30 p.m. CET.
