Prologue: The Fickelty of Fashion

When I first received the request to contribute a lecture on the topic of fashion for the conference State of art in night studies and club cultures in a Franco-German perspective in the fall of 2021, I didn’t need to think twice about the subject I was going to talk about.

At the time, the French luxury label Balenciaga and its über-famous Creative Director Demna Gvasalia, virtually dominated the fashion world. The Met Gala, probably the most media-rich international fashion event, had recently taken place for the first time after a two-year pandemic hiatus. People were starved for glitz and glamour and finally wanted to see exciting clothes on the red carpet again after the dreary sweatpants period. Some of the most photographed stars at the event, including Rihanna, Kim Kardashian, Isabelle Huppert or Elliot Ross wore looks by Balenciaga that evening.

A luxury fashion label becoming the darling of high society is nothing new in itself. At other times it was Chanel, Versace or Gucci. What made the hype around Balenciaga so special was the nature of the designs, which gave the public image of exclusive designer fashion and the idea of luxury a whole new direction. Demna understood the desirabilities of internet culture better than any other contemporary designer.  He knew that people still turned to fashion to demonstrate status and superiority, but that the old codes of glamour and high fashion had become meaningless and boring.

In an interview with British Vogue he explained: “[A logo] can give someone a notion – a feeling – of belonging to whatever social group they want to be seen as part of” (Madsen, 2021, para. 8).

In the following, I will mainly focus on the striking parallelism between elite social spheres normally associated with luxury consumption and the Berlin Underground Techno Scene, especially Berghain, often dubbed as “the world’s most exclusive club” (Lifestyle Desk, 2022, para. 1; Linux, 2022, para. 1). I will argue in a world rattled with crisis, the lifestyle of easy leisure, jewels, champagne and private jets has lost much of its appeal. Instead, Demna set out to sell decadence and a hint of darkroom sex. By copying, recreating and sharpening typical outfits of Berlin clubbers, head-to-toe black and combining sportswear with fetish elements, Balenciaga’s rapid rise was based on what has come to be known as the Berghain look.

The events, which immediately followed my lecture at the conference State of art in night studies and club cultures in a Franco-German perspective, have changed the way the Balenciaga aesthetic shaped by Gvasalsia is received today. Therefore, an inventory of the different references that exist between this aesthetic and the clothing practices of Berlin clubbers, and more broadly, between the Parisian luxury industry and the Berlin underground, must necessarily include an analysis of the scandalization of this aesthetic in mainstream discourse.

Fashion social media was full of pictures of Balenciaga’s mud spectacle over the next few days. Many were enthusiastic, some disturbed, as usual since Gvasalia took the helm at Balenciaga. Nevertheless, in retrospect, it seems that this evening of October 2nd, this show, was a turning point. The tectonic plates of crowd favour and contemporary taste had begun to shift, heading inexorably toward a catastrophic collision.

The show was opened by the rapper Kanye West, who at that time was also extremely successful as a designer thanks to his collaboration with the sporting goods manufacturer Adidas. But West, who wore a kind of futuristic combat suit, had repeatedly made negative headline in the months prior, for example in connection with the divorce from his ex-wife Kim Kardashian, who accused him of harassment and stalking. Many wondered why Balenciaga continued to hold on to West as a celebrity model. But worse was to come.

Just one day after his appearance in Balenciaga’s muddy arena, West publicly showed up in Paris holding hands with right-wing conservative political commentator Candace Owens. Both wore T-shirts apparently designed by West himself, printed with the controversial slogan „White Lives Matters“ on the back.

Now things came thick and fast: On October 8^th, West sent out a tweet announcing a personal vendetta against “Jewish People”. Over the next few days, he became increasingly unhinged, seemingly entangled in anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, partly in response to public criticism of his statement (American Jewish Committee, 2023).

On October 21rst, Balenciaga ended its collaboration with Kanye West, but as it turned out, the real problems for Balenciaga were yet to begin. A few weeks later, in November 2022, Balenciaga released an ad campaign for its mock-merchandise line Balenciaga Objects. On the associated website, everything from lighters, key chains and coffee mugs to bedding and dog food bowls were available for purchase – at extremely high prices and featuring the Balenciaga logo.

Italian documentary photographer Gabriele Galimberti was hired for the campaign. Two years earlier, in 2020, Galimberti had enjoyed great international success with his Toy Stories series, which showed children around the world in their bedrooms, with their possessions neatly lined up in front of them.  The ad images for Balenciaga were conceived in a very similar way, but with one crucial difference: the children were cast, the bedrooms were built by set designers, and instead of toys, pieces from the Balenciaga Objects collection lay draped at their feet. The children wore sportswear with the Balenciaga logo, and held the tattered teddy bear handbags that had previously been part of the Paris mud show in their tiny hands. Due to the calmer staging of the images, the details were now more eye-catching: one bear wore a fishnet shirt and studded wristbands, another black leather straps around his torso. In the media, the talk quickly turned to „stuffed toy[s] in bondage gear“(Rao, 2022) or „BDSM teddy bears“ (Diaz, 2022). Kim Kardashian, who had happily posed in head-to-toe Balenciaga just days earlier, now expressed feeling „disgusted and outraged“ (Twitter, 2022) by the label. In the following weeks, the scandal continues to draw complicated circles, eventually showing all elements of a full-blown conspiracy theory (see in Paton, Friedman & Testa, 2022). The reputation of a fashion house, perhaps that of an entire industry, was at stake – as well as a great deal of money. Within a single season, Balenciaga dropped from the most-searched fashion brand on Google to a modest place 18, social media posts, especially on TikTok, featuring hashtags such as #cancelbalenciaga or #burnbalenciaga accumulated more than 300 million views, flagship stores in London and Los Angeles were vandalized  (Gargóles & Ambás, 2023).

Demna, who rarely gave interviews and had never commented in the past on any of the numerous scandals he caused, finally broke his silence on December 2nd, 2022 and apologized publicly. In March 2023 he showed his next collection in Paris: simple, minimalist, scandal-free. He had now realized, he wrote in a personal note left on the chairs of the invited guests, that fashion had changed, that it could no longer be a form of entertainment (Issawi, 2023).

Trash Chic: Balenciaga and the Invention of New Luxury

In order to properly understand the rise and fall of Balenciaga, a brief look at the label’s history is necessary: founded in 1917 by the Basque couturier Christobál Balenciaga, the house has been headquartered in Paris since 1937. The designer enjoyed great success, especially in the 1950s and 1960s, by helping to shape a new, free and extravagant image of women. Balenciaga reinterpreted the tunic and successfully launched the baby doll dress and the sack dress. Covering the female body in opulent fabrics, creating silhouettes that defied the natural shape of the female figure, was a bold step away from Dior’s New Look which had dominated the previous decade. Accessible only to a handful of well-heeled upper-class customers, Balenciaga’s voluminous gowns redefined luxury: instead of squeezing into uncomfortable clothes to show off their tiny waists, ladies now wore almost architectural structures that allowed them to take up space (Gilligan, 2017).

In 1968 Christobál Balenciaga withdrew from the public eye. Although he had been a visual pioneer of the hippie movement with his loose fitting, eye-catching dresses, he did not like the new shape of society, characterized by youth cultural protests. He missed the glamour of high society, famously stating: “There is no one left to dress” (Fury, 2013, para. 1).

After Balenciaga’s death in 1972, several attempts were made to revive the label, designers Nicholas Ghesquière and Alexander Wang were hired as creative directors but only achieved modest success.

It wasn’t until 2015, when Georgian Demna Gvasalia, who had previously made headlines as the mastermind behind design collective Vetements, took over, that the Balenciaga was able to return to its old glory days. Gvalsalia’s recipe was conceivably simple and a little irreverent: instead of rummaging through Balanciaga’s archives to score points with contemporary interpretations of iconic designs, as Ghesquière and Wang had tried to do, he unceremoniously exported Vetements‚ already successful concept to his new employer. In fact, the designs of Balanciaga and Vetements (Demna remained in charge here until 2019) meshed so seamlessly that it would have been almost impossible to tell them apart without the excessive all-over prints of the respective brand names, one of the distinguishing features of Demna’s style (Talon, 2015).

As a result, not a season went by without Balenciaga launching another well-calculated scandal. The approach was always the same: Gvasalia was inspired by set pieces from youth and trash culture and translated them into sinfully expensive status symbols. For Fall/Winter 2016, he designed the Bazar Bag, a tote bag made of the finest calfskin leather, whose design was inspired by the cheap nylon bags used by flying merchants to transport their goods. In January 2017, Balenciaga launched the Triple S Sneaker, a chunky white athletic shoe with a thick sole made of foamed plastic.

The introduction of this sneaker model represents an important triggering moment for the fashion of the 2010s, because not only was the term Ugly Sneaker on everyone’s lips, but the trend of luxury labels now competing in the sneaker market for a young clientele continued (Luis Vuitton followed a year later with the „Archlight“ model, in 2020 Dior collaborated with Nike etc.).  In 2022, Gvasalia continued the strategy of recreating cheap and unglamorous commodities as luxury items by launching the aptly named „Trash Bag“ as well as the „Lay’s x Balenciaga Potatoe Chips Clutch Bag“.

While this technique of counteracting the high fashion realm with mundane or “low-class” codes will be examined in detail later, it must be noted, that the Demna-era Balenciaga aesthetic was from the outset not only linked to popular consumer culture but to a specific pop-cultural cluster of knowledge. Recurring motifs in Balenciaga’s collections, such as all-black outfits, chunky sneakers, wrap-around sunglasses, and BDSM accessories such as leather face masks or dog collars, have been closely associated with Berlin’s underground rave scene, especially the Berghain crowd. Within just a few years, the aesthetic between the club Berghain and the label Balenciaga were perceived as symbiotic to such an extent, that it was often not clear who was referring to whom – or how this similarity should be evaluated culturally. One fashion blogger, for example, noted that Balenciaga’s Instagram account “looks like a private account of someone who parties at Berghain” (Ventus, 2019, para. 2).  While a glossy magazine admired the fact that the crowd at Berghain looked, like they just came from a Balenciaga show (Riedl, 2022). However, this apparent love affair between high fashion looks and electronic music does not appeal to everyone:  a music journalist complained that Berghain had become “a soulless simulation of cool”, underlining his assessment by stating that “[h]alf the dancefloor looked like they stepped off the Balenciaga runway” (Lhooq, 2022, para. 6). The article was accompanied by a photomontage of one of Gvasalia’s mud-pit models clad in black leather and chains, only now stomping through the gravel in front of the club’s entrance.

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Veröffentlicht in: Anita Jóri & Guillaume Robin (Hgs.): Living at Night in Times of Pandemic. Night Studies and Club Culture in France and Germany. Bielefeld: transcript, 63-81.