Saturday, October 1, 2011

Paris Fashion Week Coverage

Balenciaga Spring 2012

Designer Nicolas Ghesquière, the rock star of the fashion world, does what only a really accomplished musician can do. An artist, like Beck for instance, can completely change their sound from album to album. Ghesquière completely changes the Balenciaga look from season to season – which earns him the reputation for being one of the most innovative designers in the past decade. The standing room of Balenciaga devotees made this show feel even more like a rock concert.

The floating shapes that made their way down the runway were a design revelation, a stylish girl’s dream, and an editor’s first-pick for front page outfit. It started with boxy oversized jackets done up in silky blocks of intersecting colors and paired with unevenly hemmed shorts. This wonderful jacket then gets elongated into dress form. These pieces are smooth and futuristic and are so beautifully structured that they seem to hover above the models’ bodies, instead of resting on them. Ghesquière then gets more inventive with mixing and matching prints and textures, and pairs all of these weird, wonderful contrasting looks with the craziest hats you’ve ever seen. It looks, in the front, like a low cloche hat and then bows out in the back into a tail that dips below the shoulders. For the last looks, Ghesquière patchworks together the silk color blocks, sections of leather, and then ties it all up in a big gold belt across the shoulders. The refreshing and consistent novelty of the Balenciaga runway makes it a treat every fashion week, and we look forward to savoring these pieces in person for Spring/Summer 2012.

written by GRACE GORDON|photos: courtesy of GoRunway

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