Demna’s last act: Balenciaga Haute Couture 54th

Paris, July 9, 2025. Balenciaga has just presented its last Haute Couture collection under the creative direction of Demna Gvasalia. A closing of a cycle that feels like a turning point in the history of a house that has always been at the forefront. The expectation in the room is palpable and not only because of the collection, and what it means, but also because in the front row sits Pierpaolo Piccioli, the new creative director who will take the reins from now on.

Among the faces, figures that are already part of the Balenciaga story: Lori Harvey, Luka Sabbat, Nicole Kidman and Cardi B, who arrives with all her energy on her third day of Haute Couture. Anna Wintour observes with the same coolness as always: she imposes even with glasses. But where is Kim Kardashian? An unexpected absence after a private fitting yesterday that everyone documented and brought out on networks. No seat for her. But the wait is broken when she bursts onto the catwalk, dressed in a white fur coat, a satin lingerie dress and jewelry by Lorraine Schwartz, who signs the creations of the entire collection.

There is no music on the catwalk, only voices – male and female – reciting names, as if they were incantations that open the door to a fashion show that feels more like a ceremony, the final strains. The models wear black and white painted hands, exaggerated shoulders and erect necks, almost like baroque columns, reminiscent of a Cruella de Vil of the future. The houndstooth and structured wool appear as nods to the archive, reinterpreted in a Demnian key. Feather collars burst in to give an avian, almost post-human feel, while men enter with the same visual grammar: leather, bombers, total black and elongated toe shoes that seem to come out of a dark and sophisticated universe.

The show builds to a climax that mixes the executive with the dystopian -we know how Demna does it-: sharp suits, total looks that could belong as much to a meeting of top executives as to the wardrobe of the X-Men or the Matrix. Suddenly, a model in a tight-waisted, head-to-toe leather dress bursts onto the catwalk. She also carries a fan of stones that she unfurls in a ritual gesture, before the catwalk is filled with princess dresses in pink, blue and pastel yellow. Then Naomi Campbell appears in a sequined black dress, and as the final cherry on top a structured lace dress, which simulates a cancan without a cancan, puts the finishing touch to the collection.

And yet, there is something we cannot ignore: in her farewell, Demna has not offered anything new. The collection breathes all her codes – the extreme shoulders, the rigid silhouette, the solemn black, the dystopian air – but there is no final twist or revelation. The only gestures that go off script are those two princess dresses, as if a restrained fantasy had managed to seep into the designer’s imagination. Is that enough for a last act? Considering past runway shows – from that theater sunk in the mud to the blizzard of nine – this farewell feels a bit lazy, as if there was no need to prove anything more. Perhaps that’s why she chose to eliminate the music and replace it with voices reciting names, as if the echo of her own ideas were already enough to fill the room.

Demna is leaving for Gucci, but he leaves a mark that, like it or not, has marked a before and after in Balenciaga’s DNA; and also in the language of fashion as we know it today. Now, the question remains: what will the next page look like with Pierpaolo Piccioli at the helm?