Photo Demna Gvasalia in the room where his Balenciaga show took place during Paris Fashion Week. Credit Guia Besana for The New York Times
PARIS — If the appointment of Demna Gvasalia, 34, the upstart designer of Vetements, as artistic director of Balenciaga was the surprise of the last Paris fashion season, it has been the toast of this most recent one. His debut collection for the landmark French label was met with raves from nearly every corner. (The all-white cast of models received harsher reviews, especially online. Asked about the matter, Mr. Gvasalia declined to address it directly, saying, in part, "What does attitude look like? Is it in the body, the clothes, the mind?")
Balenciaga, formerly stewarded by the American designer Alexander Wang, was in need of a refresh; Mr. Gvasalia, a Sukhumi, Georgia-born, Antwerp-trained alumnus of Maison Martin Margiela and Louis Vuitton, provided it.
In short order Mr. Gvasalia has shot from an unknown to man in high demand, dividing his time between two collections and the demands of a new swarm of interested retailers, members of the media and fans.
Mr. Gvasalia arrived at the Balenciaga offices, a giant, striped market bag from his first collection slung over his shoulder, to discuss his work, his Paris shows and the early reaction to his first designs. (This interview has been condensed and edited.)
Continue reading the main story Slide Show Balenciaga: Fall 2016 RTW CreditValerio Mezzanotti/Nowfashion
It's been 24 hours since the Balenciaga show. How are you feeling now?
I'm starting to feel the exhaustion, actually. I worked on two shows in four days. It was so much adrenaline and so much excitement about it, I didn't really feel tired. Now I'm start to feel that.
At Vetements last week, I asked you if you were feeling the pressure and you said: "No, I love it. It's like a drug."
It is. I'm starting to feel depressed today, I think. It wasn't really pressure. It was the dynamic of every day doi ng this thing. The last 10 days, every single day I worked on a show. From Thursday to Thursday, then it was Vetements. Then I said, how lucky I am that there is Balenciaga show coming on Sunday. It's not over yet. I felt like I want more. That's why I put that song at the end of the show: "More," by Sisters of Mercy.
Was there ever a question of not doing both?
For me, no. The question was how.
Continue reading the main story Slide Show Vetements: Fall 2016 RTW CreditGio Staiano/Nowfashion .
Tell me about your relationship to Balenciaga before you arrived.
Everything I knew about Balenciaga was really linked to the fashion history books where I saw those amazing, beautiful pieces that he created, but I didn't know much more than that. And of course the period of Nicolas [Ghesquière], which was the period where I was studying fashion, so it was something that I had to be aware of. But the things that I discovered when I went... when I started to read about Cristóbal and his way of working, and then I saw the archives, very importantly what I discovered was actually his business vision.
How so?
He wasn't only a couturier, he was also a businessman, from the beginning. Having other lines in Spain, for example, that were more accessible in pricing. They were more industrialized, less couture. When I found that out, it was very exciting for me to understand how product-oriented he was as well.
Is that how you think of yourself as a designer: as product-oriented?
I'm completely product-oriented. I only design and I only make clothes in order for them to be worn by someone, meaning that they have to be sold. It's never done for the show or to be in a museum or anything like this. There is no point to make pieces for the show because... because there is no point. People need to be able to go to the store in six months and find what they have seen.
Do you think you are well understood?
There were quite a lot of people who came backstage after the show, and told me: "I want to buy that, I want to wear that." That's the biggest compliment, I think, and that's the most important thing. In terms of the way I work, I'm not sure that I'm fully understood. But that's because I'm extremely technical in my design approach and at the same time extremely commercial and product-oriented. It's not about creating the dream or theatrics or making a "beautiful show." It's probably pragmatic and boring, the way I approach it all, but that's the way I am.
When I went backstage after the show, I was struck by how many people were there. You were literally backed into a corner by people wanting an explanation. I'm wondering how useful you think that is.
I realize more and more that it's so important to explain what you do. Because I'm very much about the construction of the garment. I don't tell stories: "Oh, my woman, she went to the forest," or that sort of thing. I basically need to explain the clothes. Otherwise they might have thought it's just styled that way.
You said something interesting backstage, about the off-the-shoulder parka that is one of the collection's key pieces: that the w ay it falls is not a styling effect.
Photo Credit Valerio Mezzanotti/Nowfashion
People didn't get it. Because it's really constructed into the garment. The attitude of wearing it this way is part of the construction. For me, that's the most interesting challenge of design.
I'm interested to hear your thoughts on styling. Styling has taken over a lot of fashion: There's a lot of design that only looks good for a photograph, professionally tweaked. Yet you have a very close relationship with your stylist, Lotta Volkova, and there is a lot of styling in your shows and collections.
With Lotta, it's less a styling relationship, it's a friendship. She's more someone I project on. I'd love to wear thigh boots in here, and a miniskirt. I can't. So she is someone who does it, and when I see her, there's something that really inspires me. Sometimes I hate what she wears. I also love that. She definitely has a point of view. I couldn't just hire a stylist to put the clothes together. It's really this exchange that makes our collaboration work.
Continue reading the main story Demna Gvasalia's Balenciaga Debut
I don't hear you being terribly respectful of styling.
I don't believe in it. Styling... of course it's important to make a show, to style it. But when I think of a collection, I think so much of it in separate pieces. I care about the parka, I care about the pants. I never think in terms of the silhouette. The fun part is, when you receive all those pieces, it's a little Christmas moment in fashion: They all arrive, and the boxes open. That's when you start playing with it. That's when you actually discover the silhouettes. And it always works.
Was there a lot that was rejected from the show, a lot we didn't see?
The only part that we didn't really show is the wardrobe part, Le Garderobe. It's a capsule that I started this season which includes very, very classic wardrobe pieces like a normal trench coat with a perfect fit, a slim pant, all the classics. These will be available continuously.
When I read what's been written about your work, the word that comes up often is "underground." I'm curious how you feel about that.
This whole underground thing ... people brand you as "underground" if you make a show in a sex club. It's underground — for Paris. Because Paris has been kind of stagnant for a very long time. I think it's about a certain mood and energy, that underground label. I don't consider myself underground. I go to squalid parts outside of Paris, but that doesn't make me underground. It's just my lifestyle. I think underground itself is over. It doesn't really exist today.
I wonder if that term effectively takes away from the amount of technique and design in your work — whether it becomes a way to dismiss it as, "Well, that's just a hoodie."
The hoodie is a very complex garment, I would say. In my last show in Vetements, I did a hoodie. When it arrived and I saw it on the hanger, I told my team, 'What is that hoodie?' It looks like Uniqlo or whatever. I really forgot what we did with it. But when you put it on, with the hood on, the whole thing moves up. It gives you that attitude. That kind of easy twist, something very simple that makes it a basic, almost mainstream hoodie into an almost attitude garment, that's the challenge today. That was exactly the way I approached this collection.
I've been struck by the continuity between your two collections — even the use of Eliza Douglas to model the last look of one show, and then the first of the other.
That was a message. I wanted Eliza to close on Thursday and to open yesterday because I wanted to show the transformation from what t hey call underground into the power look. The same person can be both. And she actually did feel it. She was like, "I feel like I'm on the Forbes list!" It's a very important part for me to have that exchange, and have that circle around.
Continue reading the main story Do you think there's a flavor of Paris in what you do? Balenciaga is so associated with Paris, it's almost a shorthand for Paris fashion.
Yes, but it's this kind of Paris that people don't really think of. People think of Paris like this movie: romantic, sitting in the cafe in the rain, Rive Gauche, Café Flore. For me, Paris is a completely different thing. The area where I live, it's around Barbès. It's quite rough. There is no chic, polished thing. It's very real. I go to the supermarket to shop and I make so many pictures and write things I see people wear. There are so many crazy people in Paris, all grumpy but very inspiring.
How do you develop this from here? How do you take it forward?
I think I found the base for what I want to do at Balenciaga. It's really to build in the certain refined attitude and the modern couture element into wearable clothing, and to work quite architecturally with garments, because that's for me what Balenciaga stands for. Once you have this recipe, I think it's quite easy.
How similar or different does this look to your initial proposal for Balenciaga, when you were being considered for the job?
You know, I showed 10 images that explained, more or less, my vision. Most of those images were a series of photographs of kids in New York on the street being shown an old couture picture — by Irving Penn or whoever, all those images we know from the couture books — and they had to mimic the same attitude. I found this extremely beautiful and inspiring. That was the attitude.
