LOVE blog
The LA Times' Booth Moore was first onto Twitter immediately following Balenciaga. Staged at the Crillon Hotel (most unusual for Balenciaga) and attended by Catherine Deneuve and Salma Hayek, the show - make that shows - featured "fresh and wearable" print dresses, draped jackets, cigarette pants, draped silk skirts and tweedy metallic knits. The New York Times' Cathy Horyn published the first images and later blogged about the draped coat dresses, the reedition of a spot print from Balenciaga's archive - and the spirit of Yves Saint Laurent. LOVE magazine later blogged more shots (above, below). Frockwriter Tweeted (and prior to the UK Telegraph story going online), that we thought it looked like something out of Joan Collins' winnebago whilst shooting Dynasty. That the venue, celebs and collection smacked of someone being given an ultimatum and that it looked like Ghesquière designed the tackiest collection he could to thumb his nose at PPR. But hell, what would we know? More FW0910 coverage to come once we have finished some other urgent work. Click here to see the complete collection on style.it.
LOVE blog
balenciaga FW0910/the new york times
7 comments:
I am usually a MAD Balenciaga fan... I just don't understand the horror of this... People, help me here..... can someone explain what i am missing?
no, you are not alone chowder - i just updated the post with some tweets i did a little while ago. i appreciate that not everyone follows twitter. FYI it couldn't be easier - just go search.twitter.com and key in "PFW" - any paris fashion week tweets tagged with #PFW will be in there. sadly a lot of ppl using twitter still don't understand the hashtag system. anyhow, i find it curious that not one major fashion writer appears to have yet criticised the collection.
The horror? I think it's incredibly modern and beyond chic.
What's there to criticise?
there has in fact been quite a bit of online criticism. this collection appears to have really divided opinion.
anyone having trouble finding online criticm of this collection - why that is, i'm not sure, as there are a plethora of blogs etc which have slammed it - take a look at the comments on cathy horyn's NYT 'on the runway' blog:
http://bit.ly/dnrHr
this collection is interesting because it has so divided opinion. and that's what it is, personal opinion. the draped skirts have some merit but overall this collection just looks ghastly to my eye. joan collins meets diane freis. i'm finding it hard to believe that it was not designed as a deliberate parody - and that there has not been a peep of criticism from one mainstream fashion critic. it's almost as if they're afraid to criticise it because they don't want to lose their seats at that ultra exclusive balenciaga show table. colin mcdowell once told me he wasn't invited one season after doing a critical review, so anything's possible.
but at what price do you hold back on your real opinion? fashion critics deliberately pulled punches for years on armani, laughing as they walked out of the show - but secretly hoping that he didn't hear and cancel his advertising. at the end of the day PPR does own a lot of brands - and spends a lot of money advertising. although not so much nowadays however.
or is it that they don't want to believe that ghesquière is capable of producing a middle aged turkey? or that their own personal tastes veer in that direction anyway and they're thrilled that finally he has designed something that they can actually wear? time will tell if the collection actually sells. who it sells to. and what it does to the balenciaga brand. the hausfraus of baltimore might be the only ones with any dough to burn in this economic climate, but they're not at the cutting edge. you pander to them for the sake of sales at your peril. forget what the people who are paid to write about the collections are saying, word of mouth so far ain't good.
I think the styling is off. I love half and hate half, but I suspect it might grow on me. There are some interesting shapes, draping, textures and ideas.
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