Brand New Balenciaga

The first collection under Pierpaolo Piccioli’s creative direction, Balenciaga’s spring-summer drop hits with heightened anticipation. More than two decades at Valentino earned the designer a cult following, predominantly for his elevated use of colour, couture and tailoring. While colour punctuates the collection with rich jewel-like tones of purple and green alongside soft powder pinks and yellows, Piccioli’s dominant use of black nods to the work of Cristòbal Balenciaga, who favoured black to accentuate sculptural form. “The meaning of Balenciaga is a methodology. The process of creation as ideology, as identity, an expression of humanity and human invention,” read the show notes. “The début collection by Pierpaolo Piccioli as Creative Director of Balenciaga commemorates this essential component of the Maison, and of the work of Cristòbal Balenciaga, bringing it into the present. Not homage, but recalibration.”

Volume speaks wonders, with feathered and gathered skirts, peplum hems on strappy dresses, and oversized shirts, capes and coats that billow over the frame. “A crucial exchange exists between body and cloth, a shifting interrelationship. In precise gesture to his reasoning, here garments explore the space between fabric and form, the air between as a third dimension, a vital component of their construction.” Chocolate, black and burgundy leather - cropped tops, tailored jackets and opera gloves - add edge to the whimsy.