The Gvasalia offensive
The appointment at Balenciaga of a designer most usually labelled ‘underground’ left industry watchers perplexed. Yes with his singular eye, clothes with attitude and pragmatic idea of luxury, Demna Gvasalia has made a good start. This least diva-like of designers calls himself simply a ‘dressmaker’ and is on a mission to reinvent the modern wardrobe with a realism that does not exclude invention.
1/5Truth be told, Demna Gvasalia was just as surprised as the rest of the fashion world when Balenciaga chose him to be the new creative director. He was a designer whose name was barely out, just a few months after the Vêtements collective that he heads up had burst onto the scene with a string of fashion shows that made as many headlines for their choice of venue as they did for the clothes. There was Le Président, a giant of a Chinese restaurant in Belleville “with a very good reputation”, according to its own website, then even better, the notorious gay sex club Le Dépôt in the Marais, with a back room that we hear also has a very good reputation (if you’re interested, it wasn’t redecorated for the show, but left in all its glory for the fashion crowd. We could go into detail about the basement show space, but we won’t). These are not places that come immediately to mind as venues for luxury collections and it was the same case again in March, when the collective held their third show at the American cathedral on Avenue George V, with the fashion congregation arranged demurely in the pews in an unusual – and not disinteresting – tableau. Three days later, Demna Gvasalia showed his first collection for Balenciaga. It goes without saying that it was one of the most highly anticipated of Fashion Week, everyone and their assistant had something to say about whether it would be a monumental failure, a roaring success or a semi-fail, but the show turned out to be a Fashion Week epiphany. The general consensus was that it was good, it was strong, it was right and all because Demna Gvasalia had done what he does best: revisited modern wardrobe classics with radical volume and bold cuts. It was a virtuoso collection, and refreshing, with a less crazy/grungey/underground edge than Vêtements and a real-life demonstration of the art of tailoring that Cristóbal Balenciaga would no doubt have appreciated. “Demna emerged very quickly as the best choice for the house,” wrote Isabelle Guichot, chairman and CEO of Balenciaga, when we asked her for comment.” Thanks to his technical expertise and the fashion knowledge gleaned from his wide experience, combined with an innovative and well thought-out methodology, he has a fresh view on what it is to be a creative.” When we arrange to meet him in a bar near where he lives in the 10th arrondissement, ten days have passed since his triumphant first collection for the house. He is right on time, waiting outside, in cap and earrings, smoking a cigarette. ‘Time is money’ reads his striped T-shirt. We asked for an hour. Skirt, tights and shoes by Balenciaga By Théodora Aspart, translated by Kate Matthams-Spencer Photographer: David Sims Styling: Emmanuelle Alt
2/5Demna Gvasalia was born in Georgia in 1981, where he spent the first 17 years of his life. His early days as a uniformed young man in the USSR is not a usual background for the creative director of a major Paris fashion house. “And it was a horrible uniform. I tried to customize it by shortening the pants, which brought me no end of problems. The simple fact of being different was a problem in itself, in a communist country. People would ask me why I wanted to be different at all. I certainly didn’t feel like other people, but I had no room for maneuver.“ The only shining light in the darkness, was a creative grandmother. “She had taste, she was pretty in her way. She bought the same thing as everyone else, but altered it, added fabric to make it longer… I spent a lot of time with her. She always asked me what I thought of her outfit, likely not because she needed my opinion, but because she just wanted to talk to someone and I was there. It was during this period that my interest in clothing was born and moreover, an interest in the way women make them their own.” After a childhood spent living in different places following his father’s job, in his late teens Demna put down roots in London, then Germany. “A cultural bulimic” is how he still describes himself. “I was discovering everything at once, especially music, about which I knew absolutely nothing before. I started listening to hip-hop, techno, goth metal, I was a little hysterical about it. I went to all the parties and naturally started looking at the other people there, too. I saw hip-hop fans dressing hip-hop style and goths wearing black.” He took his time finding his own style.” I didn’t have a very clear direction, just because I listened to Sisters of Mercy on a loop one day, it didn’t mean that I had to dress in head-to-toe black. I mixed it up a lot and that still underpins my work today, it has a random quality. I’ve had loads of different hair colors… I was just like the average Western teen at 13 or 14, only I was doing it all much later, I was already 18.” Jacket, skirt, blouse, thigh-high boots and bracelet by Balenciaga By Théodora Aspart, translated by Kate Matthams-Spencer Photographer: David Sims Styling: Emmanuelle Alt
3/5He headed to Antwerp and the fashion department of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts. Walter Van Beirendonck, who taught there, offered him a position as a menswear designer before he even finished his degree and he would work for him for a little over a year, before launching his own womenswear project. It was shown online and in a showroom, but not marketed, yet it still won him a place at Maison Margiela, in Paris, a studio where he “fell in love with clothes.” And if he wasn’t crazy about the aesthetic in vogue, it was the approach that appealed to him: “[at Margiela] I learnt about deconstructing to reconstruct, understanding how each piece was made, pulling apart the production… and it remains fundamental to the way I approach design.” Three years later, he received an offer from Louis Vuitton during the Marc Jacobs period, a label that was neither conceptual, nor to his taste. It was exactly what he was looking for, he accepted immediately and began to learn about how a luxury mastodon works from the inside. His next move, was to take a tangent. With friends he met at Margiela, he set up Vêtements, born of creative frustration and a desire to communicate his own vision. The label was immediately received as marginal and disruptive, despite the fact that at no time has he ever talked about rejecting traditional luxury codes. In fact, as its name indicates, Vêtements throws the product itself right into the middle of the ring. Gvasalia & co do not think in terms of collections and style stories, but about the pieces themselves and only the pieces, an approach in stark contrast with the houses that “hold shows with clothes that will never be in stores, or will, but with more commercial cuts that have nothing to do with what went down the runway. Or labels that use their shows are communications channels through which to sell handbags.” With Gvasalia, what is seen at the show will be on the rails in-store, whether it’s for Vêtements or Balenciaga and he insists that his designs are rooted in reality and are immediately wearable. Hold up, extreme volume, exaggerated hips and quarterback shoulders? Wearable, really? “Yes, wearable for the woman who I had in mind when I was designing,” he counters.” But she does exist.” Dress and earring by Balenciaga By Théodora Aspart, translated by Kate Matthams-Spencer Photographer: David Sims Styling: Emmanuelle Alt
4/5To both labels, he applies the same methodology, early in the season. “It’s pretty banal, I draw up a list, an inventory of the wardrobe I want to create. A double-breasted coat, a masculine jacket, a military trench, whatever I have in mind. From there, I brainstorm with the team about how we can revisit these basic pieces and take them towards a new creative concept.” Ever the pragmatist, he calls in a sociologist to help him understand women’s approach to clothing around the world and the reasons why they might choose one piece over another.” He doesn’t sketch, preferring to develop each piece in 3D “like a sculpture”, cutting, pinning and unpicking existing garments to better re-form them. The final pieces come together, “like Lego”, right before the show. For his first collection for Balenciaga, he went to the house’s archives just once “not so much to absorb the aesthetic of Cristóbal Balenciaga, more to see how he built the fabric around the body, the techniques he used to cut and construct.” Hence, the superfine horsehair basques in the show and the modular jackets with shortened backs that mean they can be worn half open on the shoulders like opera coats or closed completely, to change the volumes and create another attitude entirely. The only slight downer in the hours that followed the show was a little media controversy around the casting, with reproaches from certain quarters that Demna had only chosen white models. He was surprised by the reaction, but says that he understands. In his defense, “I wasn’t thinking about political correctness when I cast the girls. I have known most of them for a long time, they are friends, characters that I like.” And: “I think the line-up was more diverse than on a lot of other catwalks. Maybe not in terms of skin color, but certainly in terms of beauty type. Each girl’s physique was different.” We can give him that. Swing parka, top, pants, earrings and lace-ups by Balenciaga By Théodora Aspart, translated by Kate Matthams-Spencer Photographer: David Sims Styling: Emmanuelle Alt
5/5Before the next show, Demna will go back to experimentation, motivated by a perpetual need for newness – “I’m impatient, I change my opinion ten times a day, I always need to be doing something new” – and the feeling that there is always “a little more to offer.” He has a deep connection to his art, one that he will continue as long as it still “amuses” him; he doesn’t set out to provoke or revolutionize, simply to question the modern wardrobe. So is he a couturier, a designer, or an artist? He defines himself more as a pragmatic “dressmaker”, who is convinced of one thing: “in a world in which we have so many different brands, I don’t think that designers can really say that they start trends any more, that they make the rules. The real designers of today are the women buying the clothes and wearing them in their own way. All we can do, is provide them with singular pieces and cross our fingers that in the end, they become fashion.” Bustier dress and thigh-boots by Balenciaga By Théodora Aspart, translated by Kate Matthams-Spencer Photographer: David Sims Styling: Emmanuelle Alt
