As Paris Fashion Week prepares for Balenciaga’s A/W18 offering, we celebrate the newspaper-print jacquard that so neatly summarises S/S18
The world is in a weird place right now – which was the message of Demna Gvasalia’s Balenciaga collection, shown to a thumping techno soundtrack in pitch black at 11.30am. Hardcore. “Fashion is a reflection of the way we live,” Gvasalia stated after the show. “I wanted this feeling that something dangerous is going to happen.” Then, he smiled a broad, shark’s grin. It’s a strange thing for a fashion show to reflect, the current overpowering sensation of disquiet in the world, the notion of questioning received ideas and ideals. Gvasalia is profoundly aware of that. Take, for instance, a neat monochrome-print twinset, patterned with what Gvasalia dubbed “fake news”. It’s a phrase that was named word of the year by the Collins lexicographers in 2017 – its use had risen 365 per cent since 2016. Chez Balenciaga, falsified reports were compiled by the design team to comprise the print, reminiscent of Elsa Schiaparelli’s designs of the 1930s, using adulatory newspaper clippings about herself. John Galliano resisted that urge for his Spring/Summer 2000 haute couture collection for Christian Dior: there, the prints were negative reviews of his past shows. In this iteration, the Gvasalia-manufactured newsprint wasn’t Breitbart-bait, but rather happy, positive stories. “Fake good news,” was the title Gvasalia gave it. Who wouldn’t want to hear – or wear – that?
Model: Aiden Curtiss at Next NY. Casting: Svea Greichgauer at AM Casting. Photographic assistant: Johnny Knapp. Production: Webber.
The Spring/Summer 2018 issue of AnOther Magazine is out now.