Balenciaga F/W 12.13 Paris

[Fashion_Girl22]

HQs






vogue.it

 

[Fashion_Girl22]

vogue.it

 

[Fashion_Girl22]

vogue.it

 

[ForChicSake]

i loved this

 

[lelaid]

for the first time in a few years i saw more stuff i liked than stuff i didn't like.

 

[fee de foret]

if 90 percent of it makes the models look frumpy, then the rest of us are doomed. balenciaga sure ain't what it used to be.

 

[Ives927]

I like this collection, I don't hate it. But with that said, I'm not sure how many more 80's sci-fi collection I can take from Nicolas anymore. He needs to go in a different direction, this is just getting old. He needs to stay away from this whole space-age thing.

 

[Scott]

to me it looks like a uninspired interpretation of NY underground in the early 80's. i see some nods to debbie harry(those strappy stephen sprouse-esque dresses)....a little fiorucci(the days when joey arias,klaus nomi and the like danced in the windows)....but it all looks quite redundant.

but i can't see how anybody is at all surprised by the 80's influence. the 80's have long been a major inspiration for nicholas....he was after all a child of that period of the late 70's-early 80's. remember the star wars collection in his second season inspired princess leia?

 

[jeremydante]

i love this collection; everything about it is fresh, innovating & completely refreshing. construction is amazing & incredibly inspiring.

 

[Frida]

PARIS, March 1, 2012
By Nicole Phelps

The Balenciaga show took place 27 floors up a Paris skyscraper in a space that the house's longtime architect, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, spent months tweaking to designer Nicolas Ghesquière's specifications. It would've provided panoramic views of Paris had it not been so cloudy. Alas, Ghesquière can't control the weather, but he marshaled no small number of professionals to produce this fashion event, and the setting was nothing short of transporting.

This season, Ghesquière was the chairman of the board and the models his employees—both literally and metaphorically. There were VPs and a legal department and interns and IT girls (as in information technology, not "It"). He even put corporate spies on his fluorescent-lit runway. Balenciaga Inc. is unlike any office you've ever seen; it'll have fashion types debating fiercely at the water cooler for months. Why? Because this was the designer in experimental mode, advancing our collective eye forward, even as he seemed to glance back at the same era he revisited for pre-fall, the one when "France decided to be modern" in the late seventies and early eighties.

The designer moved the fashion conversation along today in a few different ways: by proposing new silhouettes with exaggerated, even challenging proportions (bonded leather coats with shoulders out to there, sculptural padded sweaters over stiff A-line skirts with doubled front panels); by trafficking in items of questionable taste (those black satin sweatshirts with spacey slogans like "JOIN A WEIRD TRIP" and "OUT OF THE BLUE" are instant collector's items); and by continuing to emphasize fabric research.

The IT girls wore jumpsuits made from a hi-tech parachute material, and his animal prints came two ways—as a jacquard snake on the wool bodices of the office rebels' strapless dresses and as leopard spots that looked like liquid mercury on the executives' jackets (they were actually padded appliqués of lamé jersey). Employees at every rung on the corporate ladder will be happy to note that the new Balenciaga heel is lower—the easier to get around in—than previous incarnations.

Not all of it was as pleasing. As in any office, there are people you love and others who leave you cold. All in all, though, a remarkable company.

style.com

 

[farou7a]

Oh my gosh, I dont even know if Im mortified by the collection or if its actually interesting in a good way.

meh.

 

[liberty33r1b]

WWD Review

Nicolas Ghesquière — modernist clothier to the working woman? Such was the ruse behind the designer’s interesting fall collection for Balenciaga. Ghesquière took his audience to the recently renovated Tour Cristal, a late-Nineties office tower, a proper backdrop for an idea he’s been percolating for some several years. “The last tall building [built] in Paris,” he said in a preview. “I had this idea about a Balenciaga firm done in a very cinematic way, with different characters with different functions, the executives, the technicals, legal, the researchers, all about how women dress for work.”

Should his vision win out, Wall Street human resources types will be pushing “send” on the dress code item in the handbook. Basic banker’s stripes have their place, but not at Ghesquière’s “Balenciaga Inc.” Up and down his out-there corporate ladder, which, in addition to the aforementioned professionals, included renegade spies and rock ’n’ roll chicks with an unstated penchant for Red Bull (they stay out all night and still work just fine all day). The employees favored large volumes; accentuated, sometimes pointy bosoms; skirts that play peekaboo; loud logo fleeces; power-diva parachute silk jumpsuits, and cat’s-ear bustier dresses.

Ghesquière’s recent forays into increased volumes suggest a determination to take his runway in a more commercial direction than that which centered on his famous, superskinny silhouette. For fall though, not everything was big; it felt demonstrative, if not in the structure or at the shoulder, then in the fabric mixes. Fabulous coats, fold-front A-line skirts and pants versions of the jumpsuits looked great and salable. However, some of the fuller shapes — the short, round sweaters come to mind — didn’t exactly telegraph svelte. But then, in a fashion world of too much safety, Ghesquière remains an essential and directional risk-taker. In one area, he took reverse risk. The designer most often credited with catapulting shoes into the danger zone, both literally and psychologically, here showed desexed styles with heels almost retro in their manageability quotient. The reason, he said, was to move on from “the cloning of the girls,” and that he now prefers “something less robotic than when they are so suspended in the air. That’s not working anymore. The importance of a presentation now is individuals.”

 

[KKnardi]

Ummm... The fit is really difficult, can't see real women in these clothes...

 

[Wolkfolk]

Nicolas has delivered his very first completely miss collection ever IMO. Even though the last pre-collections have been pretty doubtful, he always managed to redeem himself with the "real" collections. But I feel like he's getting overwhelmed by this whole super futuristic/80's revival mood. He has always been inspired by sci-fi and futurism but he use to perfectly combine this inspiration with a very unique sense of chic and parisian elegance. Here I can't fiind any of it neither the DNA of the house or any really appealing look. Some people might wear it for the sake of wearing something by Ghesquière but for me this collection is bad. Completely bad. Yes Nicolas Ghesquière has delivered a very bad collection.

 

[Spike413]

Well in all fairness, he did warn us with Pre-Fall.

 

[Fatalefashion]

Loved the first looks but before the dresses with transparency the show become too empty!

 

[KKnardi]

Loved the first looks but before the dresses with transparency the show become too empty!

yeah, there's something missing for sure. I like the theme of the collection, being an office with REAL people etc, not some kind of freak-house we see everywhere else. but the more realistic the better in my book.

 

[lepetitcouturier]

Nowhere near as amazing as spring. But nowhere near as bad as pre-fall.I find the "it's so tacky, so youo'll love it" thing to be quite comical. A lot of the individual pieces are amazing, but some of the outfits aren't. II'm loving the classic Ghesquire jackets. Overall it's an okay collection. I hope he redeems himself for resort and spring.

 

[Morphe]

Alright, some of the structured jackets look good but overall it looks as if the (bad) 80s have puked all over this collection.

 

[Phuel]

I like it.

Plow through your initial revolt at another 80s-addicted silhouette and it is a very modern and still-futuristic collection with those fantastic laser-cut leather coats and jackets and even sharper laser-cut skirts. And those multi-textured layered and transparent dresses with the tiger-embossed patches reminds me of Helmut Lang's decade-defining "Hawaii" collection of 95-- complete with the multi-tier elastic waistband. The overall silhouette, although still very 80s, is leaning more towards slick Debbie Harry 82 then the always-unforgivable mallrat silhouette of 84 that was possessing the last collection.

The "collectors" 80s-arcade graphics kitsch-print sweatshirts remain a joke-- no one but models, Chloe Sevigny and Lana Del Ray will ever be wearing these, and only on the covers of Dazed and I-D. Even the most devoted fashion-victims will be avoiding these. But no house is ever above pimping some gimmicky/ugly prints, so I understand the motivation here.