Balenciaga dissects and subverts normalcy for Winter ’25

Balenciaga’s Winter ’25 show, staged last night in Paris, was a reconsideration of the very essence of dressing. Creative Director Demna, ever the provocateur, dissected the concept of ‘standard’ – the benchmark of normalcy – and turned it into something unsettlingly beautiful, something undeniably Balenciaga.

Set in a backstage labyrinth, the show inverted tradition. There was no hierarchy, no conventional seating; everyone was front row. The collection followed suit, upending expectations with rigorous tailoring and precise distortions. What seemed standardised at first glance quickly unraveled into something more complex. The black business suit – so familiar, so unassuming – took on dual identities, shifting with the person wearing it. A hand-wrinkled navy suit suggested a life lived, while a moth-eaten pinstripe deconstructed the polish of corporate wear.

Balenciaga’s approach has always been architectural and anatomical. Here, the House’s legacy of shape and structure was threaded into even the most unassuming pieces. A maxi skirt transformed a standard-fit jacket into an evolved suit. A Victorian biker-sleeved hoodie blurred time periods. A molleton maxi hoodie took on the volume of a 1967 Balenciaga wedding dress. Archetypal garments – polo shirts, puffers, cardigans – were magnified, inverted, or stretched to the extreme.

Outerwear proved a canvas for experimentation. A shearling parka nodded to the house’s 1951 Semi-Fitted line, while a back-to-front quarter-zip coat evoked Balenciaga’s designs for Bunny Mellon. The collection’s interplay of hard and soft, formal and casual, reached its pinnacle in the accessories. A suede-lined Balenciaga I PUMA bathrobe merged luxury with sport. Horoscope necklaces and faceless Geneva watch bracelets toyed with time and identity. The Portofino Mocassin and Hyperflat Rim Derby deformed tradition into something uncanny.

And yet, despite all the subversion, an elegance remained. Amid the crushed resin-treated denim and oversized sweater dresses cinched with safety pins, there was an undeniable sense of wearability. The pieces may have been distorted, but they were never unapproachable. Even the Balenciaga I PUMA Speedcat Ultrasoft, stripped of all structure, felt like a modern relic, a signifier of our relationship with material and function.

Ultimately, the Winter 25 collection was an exercise in rigour. It challenged and redefined the very standards we take for granted. By distorting the familiar, Demna revealed something more truthful than standard ever could be. In this maze of exits and entrances, Balenciaga found a new way forward.