Balenciaga's creative director Demna embarks on redemption path post scandals

Balenciaga is returning to the runway on Sunday. The brand will showcase its fall/winter 2023/24 collection in the French capital city on March 5, as confirmed by the brand's team. This will be Balenciaga creative director Demna's first runway show since his hot streak came to a screeching halt late last year due to a few spectacularly ill-considered publicity campaigns.

Having fled war as a child, Georgian designer Demna made fashion a sort of battleground of provocative ideas at the helm of Balenciaga. It was tremendously successful — until it wasn't. The 41-year-old, who dropped his last name Gvasalia in 2021, came under fire for using BDSM-themed teddy bears in a campaign featuring children.

Critics panned the brand for placing toddlers next to leather-clad bears, condemning the brand for exploiting minors.

The campaigncoincided with another ad campaign that included a strange background detail, a print-out of a US Supreme Court judgement about child abuse.

After the controversy caught global attention, Demnaprofusely apologised in an interview with Vogue and denied any intention to reference child abuse. However, the apology didn't do much for the brand sincethe damage had already beendone.

"I have decided to go back to my roots in fashion as well as to the roots of Balenciaga, which is making quality clothes -- not making image or buzz," he told Vogue.

It is an unexpected moment of contrition for a designer who was named among the world's 100 most influential people by Time less than a year ago.

Demna is reportedly walking on thin ice.

"We are allowed to make a mistake in a group like Kering," said the boss of Balenciaga's parent company, Francois-Henri Pinault. "We don't have the right to make two."

He also barely escaped contagion from the controversies around his friend Kanye West, who opened Balenciaga's last show in Paris in September. The label cut ties with the rapper after his outbursts about Jews.

Before then, Demna's playful and inventive campaigns had made Balenciaga one of the hottest brands around.

A 2021 show saw guests arriving along a red carpet and then presented with a film of their entrance that revealed the models had been secretly mingling among them, wearing the new collection.

One campaign was done in the style of a dystopian newscast; another played with the tropes of reality TV.
His daring designs included the head-to-toe black shrouds worn by Kardashian at the Met Gala in 2021.

"The unbridled creation has worked well but he will have to tame it down a little bit," said Arnaud Cadart, of fashion consultancy Flornoy Ferri.

It will be a tough reinvention, not least since one of Demna's tricks has been to turn the ugly into luxury, from his pimped-out Crocs to his notorious $1,500 garbage bags.

"Demna uses his radical approach to overturn stereotypes of what is normal and what is a luxury," said Serge Carreira, a fashion expert at Sciences Po University in Paris.

It is an approach that worked, attracting all kinds of stars from cerebral French actor Isabelle Huppert to brash US rapper Cardi B. There was a fascinating backstory, too.

A year ago, Demna's Paris show fell just after Russia's invasion of Ukraine, recalling his traumatic departure from Georgia at the age of 12, forced to flee ethnic cleansing by pro-Russian separatists.

The show saw under-dressed models walking out in an artificial snowstorm, carrying those infamous trash bags. Some found it distasteful but it was deeply felt.

The invasion "triggered the pain of a past trauma I have carried in me since 1993 when the same thing happened in my country and I became a forever refugee", he said.

Trained at the Beaux-Arts Royal Academy in Belgium, Demna worked for Maison Margiela and Louis Vuitton before creating his own label, Vetements, with his brother in 2014. He was named creative director at Balenciaga in 2015.

For many years, his trauma affected his work but he told Vanity Fair in 2021 that counselling, meditation and exercise had helped exorcise some demons. "Fashion used to feel like a battle for me. That is why there was a lot of aggression and darkness in what I did. Today I feel at peace with the system," he said.

(With inputs from agencies)

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