Balenciaga announces its new ambassadors and friends of the House

Through the lens of David Sims — a photographer who understands the tension between rawness and precision like few others — Heart and Body introduces the first ambassadors and friends of the House appointed by Piccioli, while contextualizing his first two collections: Summer 26, The Heartbeat y Fall 26, Body and Being. Heart and body. Rhythm and matter. Emotion and presence.

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“I choose individuals, not characters,” Piccioli states. The sentence may seem simple, but within the Balenciaga universe it reads almost as a manifesto. For years, the House operated through performative characters and post-apocalyptic scenographies. Piccioli shifts the focus toward the person — toward an absolute humanism.

The casting confirms it. Harris Dickinson — the British actor consolidating his rise after Babygirl and Urchin — embodies an introspective, almost fragile masculinity. Winona Ryder brings the cultural weight of multiple generations, from Beetlejuice to Stranger Things, yet here stripped of nostalgia, firmly placed in the present. Roh Yoonseo represents a contemporary Asian sensitivity aligned with South Korea’s current cultural centrality. They are joined by Danielle Deadwyler, Havana Rose Liu, Euphoria composer Labrinth, Hudson Williams, and models Mona Tougaard and Loli Bahia.

The campaign unfolds inside a Parisian atelier defined by bold architecture. Primed canvas. Almost industrial structures. Sims arranges the images in gridded compositions that resemble archives, typological studies — an emotional catalogue rather than a commercial one. Piccioli refers to a “suspended heterotopic space.” The term inevitably echoes Michel Foucault and his notion of “other spaces”: places that exist within the world yet operate under different rules. Here, time appears paused. Identity, freed from external noise, becomes sharper. In an industry accelerated by algorithmic logic, that suspension feels almost radical.

What’s most compelling is not the casting nor the set’s aesthetic. It’s the idea that values — respect, sensitivity, strength, freedom — can translate into visual language without slipping into sentimentality. Piccioli does not erase the brand’s tension; he redirects it toward a humanism that fully replaces Demna’s permanent irony.

Balenciaga is no longer asking for attention, clickbait, or mass conquest. It is asking to be understood — to revisit the history and foundations of a House that Cristóbal once built, beginning in Getaria.