Balenciaga Return to the Couture Schedule After 52 Years

Balenciaga will return to the Paris Haute Couture schedule in July 2020 for the first time since Cristóbal Balenciaga himself closed his atelier in 1968. Current creative director Demna Gvasalia will make his couture debut at the A/W 20 shows, marking a moment not only for the designer but for the Spanish fashion house as well.

'Haute Couture is the very foundation of this house, so it is my creative and visionary duty to bring couture back to Balenciaga,' Gvasalia said in a statement released by the house on 20 January, the first day of the S/S 20 couture shows in Paris.

'For me, couture is an unexplored mode of creative freedom and a platform for innovation. It not only offers another spectrum of possibilities in dressmaking, it also brings the modern vision of Balenciaga,' the designer continues.

Stepping back from his own label, Vetements, this past September, it seems like the designer is focusing entirely on his path with the Spanish house. With the creative bringing in a fresh perspective to Balenciaga since joining it in 2015, Gvasalia’s take on couture is likely to be pretty radical, or even obscure. His last show, for S/S 20, offered some easter eggs of what may be to come, through the structured, sculpted and extravagant gowns that closed it.

Cristóbal Balenciaga had a reputation as couturier of uncompromising standards and was referred to as 'the master of us all' by Christian Dior. His voluminous skirts and feminine yet contemporary figures became the trademarks of the house - a signature that we notice Gvasalia continuing in his S/S 20 collection.

'Couture is above trend. It's an expression of beauty in the highest aesthetic and qualitative levels,' Gvasalia states and the world of fashion is aching to see what is next for the revolutionary creative.