"I wanted something austere," said Nicolas Ghesquière, "but with a bit of Spanish drama. It s quite cinematographic, an idea of film noir, like Simone Signoret in Les Diaboliques—but it s really me exploring the DNA of the house, with my sci-fi things going on with the plastics and latex." The result: an extraordinary synthesis of rigorous line and shiny, high-tech surfaces illuminated at necks and wrists by the sparkling opulence of traditional jewelry. A different parure of necklace and bracelets adorned every outfit—34 uniquely breathtaking configurations of crystal, faux gems, and pearls, some of them archive copies, others new.
The genius of Ghesquière s Balenciaga is that he can extrude something so smoothly modern from so many layered references. It hit from the opening looks: molded black dresses with scrolled peplums, slit skirts, and armband sleeves—fifties cocktail catapulted into a fierce kind of twenty-first-century chic. (NB: Cristobal Balenciaga was born in the Basque country, hence the "Spanish" drama.) The clever part is the way Ghesquière melds his own vision—his taste for techno surfaces—with Balenciaga s heritage, often in the same garment—say, the car-shiny dresses cut with a swag back, or the sliced zones of shantung and plastic that are fused into a sack dress. There was much more beyond this, too: on the one hand, crazily elaborate "couture" latex, formed into hand-painted and embossed samurai biker jackets and dresses inspired by chinoiserie screens, and on the other, a few perfectly resolved urban equations for a new kind of evening dressing. The best: the skinny gray pants and Goya-inspired draped velvet and taffeta tops—superb.
