That's.. a 9,857-word article. I do love how these controversies are reformatted.. you warm up the readers with 5 pages of spectacle, finally address the elephant in the room in page 6, and to be frank, that's done well (the controversy started for a good reason but s*it hit the fan when Fox News picked it up and blended it with the Dark Ages content their viewers devour). Instead of getting a smooth landing, though, which would've been riskier but could bring better results, we then get interrupted by long paragraphs on Demna's tragic background, lowest point being the Freudian bit bargaining for the viewer's empathy ("as soon as he could write, he composed a letter to [his parents], “
in which I told them that they don’t understand me and they don’t really love me and they don’t know who I am.” [...] “It would have helped me a lot in my adult life if they reacted differently"
). Then we get Cristobal as some kind of shield and finally the beginning of a new life away from.. toxicity? lol.
Honestly, I would've been in for the ride because the 'scandal' is neither here nor there for me at this point, and I could not care less for his Balenciaga but this is where I drew my line and was like nah, actually I'm not giving you any sympathy, you pretentious little f*ck:
Demna applied to the fashion school at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp, a famously demanding program that was comparatively inexpensive. At his admission interview, someone asked him his favorite designer, and he said Dries Van Noten, because he’d just seen the name in a shopwindow. Fortunately, Van Noten was a member of the Antwerp Six, a group of pioneering designers who came out of the school in the nineteen-eighties. Demna was in.
Okay if the author bought this because she probably doesn't even know (she writes about refugees so she's doing this just for $), but why lie, Demna? so you just randomly thought, of all f*cking fashion schools, the one in Antwerp sounded like it was worth applying for, and you went through the application process and headed to the interview and somewhere, passing by some f*cking store you saw 'Dries Van Something' in a window, it could've been Bebe or Von Dutch for all you know, but somehow Dries' name stuck, you had no designer that you admired at that point, no names you were familiar with or anyone you looked up to in fashion, you just walked into fashion blindfolded and guided by your oh so pure sociological inclination for uniforms, and somehow in that interview, you randomly said "Dries Van Noten", aka. one of the most hyped Belgian designer in the early 00s WHEN YOU WERE INTERVIEWED. Sorry but ?? what's happened here? a never-meet-your-heroes story? too cool to give credit to someone who knows a few things you don't such as building a career with dignity and the kind of creativity that never needed a pool of mud to animate the corporate junk that you unveil for the suits like a clown?. Why even tell this useless piece of your past if you're ashamed of it?.
I just can't with this level of arrogance. Instead of going to Zurich and hiding in a bunker with a sewing machine and thinking about his Georgian past or his parents' neglect (the poor parents that walked for days with children in an effort to provide them a better life and he's still hammering publicly about lack of love
), he should've gone somewhere and tried ego reduction, it's a program, you clean floors and stuff like that. He's already doing that for Kering so why not do it for himself.
They should flush him in the summer. It's a quiet time to make necessary changes.
.. waiting for a table is fine, but lining up on a sidewalk for fashion, or carbs (like for something grotesque like a circular croissant)? have some self-respect and just order online where no one can see you!
).
