A surprise discovery of costumes that Cristobal Balenciaga made for a ballet performance of Ravel s Boléro in the 1930 s inspired Nicolas Ghesquière s new pre-collection. Not just the fluidity but also the color palette: baby blue, baby pink, and a barely-there shade of yellow he called bergamot. If you re thinking that sounds almost too straightforward for a Balenciaga collection in 2012, you re right. Ghesquière doesn t "do" just pretty, and so there was more to these clothes than the backstory might suggest.
The flou of a long ivory dress, for example, was juxtaposed by a rigid molded leather harness that brought to mind Game of Thrones dragon queen Daenerys Targaryen more than it did Ida Rubinstein, the Russian ballerina who commissioned Ravel s piece. In fact, the look is a riff on Ghesquière s own oeuvre; the Art Nouveau-ish cutouts on the harness refer back to a Jules Verne collection from his early days at the house.
Elsewhere, the hard/soft motif played out on a great-looking sleeveless sheath that married a scubalike material with draped pinstriped wool, and also on flowy pastel dresses and skirts bonded with a stiffer neoprene that created sculptural, three-dimensional ruffles. The new pant silhouette is high-waisted, with a wide belt bisecting the torso, while jackets, both single- and double-breasted, have a boxy, mannish mien. Ghesquière undercut that too, though, with dainty bras peeking out beneath.
There s no Balenciaga lingerie collection on the horizon, but if there were, we imagine it d do better than well at the new Paris flagship set to open in a former parking garage on Rue Saint-Honoré later this month.
