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HomeFashionBalenciaga Fall 2025 Couture Runway, Fashion Show & Collection Review

Balenciaga Fall 2025 Couture Runway, Fashion Show & Collection Review

“I was so happy to have this closure after these 10 years,” Demna said after his swan song Balenciaga couture show on Wednesday, where he broke with his custom of never taking a bow by bounding out in his trademark hoodie and blowing kisses to everyone.

He also paid tribute to his closest collaborators — from his trusty PR Robin Meason to acting legend Isabelle Huppert — by having them read out their first names on the soundtrack, saving his given name for last.

Sade’s “No Ordinary Love” was his chosen finale music — “It’s the soundtrack of my life since I was 10,” the Georgian designer revealed — and its lyrics also seemed to speak to all that he’s done for the house that Cristóbal Balenciaga built.

Among the innovations he brought to haute couture since he revived the brand’s high-fashion activity back in 2020, 52 years after the founder closed his house: opening a couture store on Avenue George V, collaborating with tech brands on face shields and boom boxes, and putting track suits, T-shirts, jeans and puffer jackets on fashion’s most prestigious stage.

Demna’s radical and influential makeover of Balenciaga was given a mini retrospective on show guests: Lisa Rinna in a vivid blue parka that seemed caught in a vortex; Katy Perry in an LBD with a wonky funnel-shaped bodice; Bryan Boy in pantaboots and a fuchsia bustier that clamped onto his narrow torso like a cuff bracelet, and couture fiend Fredrik Robertsson in a bejeweled, logo-heavy skirt suit from the 2021 hacking of a Gucci collection by Balenciaga, foreshadowing Demna’s next career move.

(Backstage the designer let slip that his first show for the Italian brand will be next March, with his September presentation during Milan Fashion Week more of a reminder of Gucci’s foundations.)

Meanwhile, his last effort for Balenciaga will be remembered for its restraint, focused on precision silhouettes and no grunge or angst save for one slightly scuffed briefcase. His fetish clothing archetypes in the dressier register — trenchcoats, bomber jackets, strong-shouldered tailoring, ladylike suits and old Hollywood gowns — were idealized and sharpened like No. 2 pencils on the first day of school.

This was Demna at his most polished, leaving a clean and classy slate for his successor, Pierpaolo Picciolo, who doesn’t seem to have a dystopian bone in his body.

There was an undercurrent of “Addams Family” in the Goth-tinged, sometimes funereal clothing; the pale models with their zombie-like stares, and the front row, with performance artist Alexis Stone channeling Morticia Adams, Thing on her shoulder and a thorny stem without the flower held aloft in one hand.

Runway hijinks included an appearance by Kim Kardashian in a negligee, a furry coat slipping off her famous shoulders; a dead ringer for Dolly Parton, and a Disney debutante come to life before our very eyes.

But they did not outshine Demna’s voluptuous tailoring and killer dressmaking, the former debuting a crumped-forward shoulder stance, the latter hinged on sculptural corsets without boning that he likened to shapewear on steroids.

“I really wanted to challenge myself,” he said.

Ditto for the tailoring. The designer was inspired by a documentary about Neopolitan tailoring he watched last year, and blown away by how some jackets are sewn like shirts. “I was really excited about that idea, because I feel that’s how the modern tailoring should be,” he enthused.

In this experimental vein, Demna dispatched to Naples a bodybuilder who required multiple fittings given his atypical body shape, his barrel chest nearly filling the doorways of the Balenciaga couture salons, where the show was held. The designer proceeded to put the same suit jacket on much smaller models, including his slight husband Loïk Gomez, to prove a point.

“I wanted to underline this idea that it’s not the garment that defines the silhouette, but the body that wears the garment,” he said.

Likewise, the look book for the show depicts the runway models on the streets of Paris, and not the most glamorous corners: under bridges, next to subway entrances or closed convenience stores, the shutters marred with graffiti.

“I wanted to make couture relevant, and put it in a context, not in a palace, not in this amazing salon, but out there in real life,” he said.

To be sure, the designer sounded sanguine about the challenge of pulling Gucci out of its downward spiral.

“In my next chapter, I have the luxury of having a lot of different codes that I have never used or had before to build on, and that’s something that excites me a lot,” he said, likening himself to a chef who suddenly has a host of new ingredients for making his next dish.

“I feel like it’s my coming out today,” he said, beaming like he’s never beamed.

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