During Paris Fashion Week, Demna staged his final couture collection for Balenciaga, a personal, poetic farewell that turned the streets of Paris into a runway and couture into something real.
By Dara Clariza Evangelista
At Paris Fashion Week, where fashion houses often go bigger, Demna chose a different route, one rooted in reflection, intimacy, and craft. His final couture show for Balenciaga was a tribute to the city that shaped him, to the people who built the clothes, and to everything he stood for in the last ten years.
Presented as a salon-style show inside Balenciaga’s historic couture salon, the garments were photographed outside, against street corners, hardware stores, grocery stands, and along the Seine. “It was in my heart to do this tribute to my Paris,” Demna said backstage. “Not the version of Paris people romanticize abroad, but the Paris I walk through, the one that shaped me.” By pulling couture out of the palace and onto the pavement, he grounded fantasy in everyday life.
This Fall 2025 collection was his last before officially exiting Balenciaga and taking up his new post as Creative Director of Gucci. He’ll be replaced at Balenciaga by Pierpaolo Piccioli, the former Valentino designer known for elegance and restraint, a stark contrast to Demna’s subversive edge.
“I needed to integrate a lot of Demna codes into this house for it to become the business that it is,” he said. “That’s something that has built the Demna chapter at Balenciaga, a combination of that beautiful but somewhat claustrophobic heritage and my personal style.”
The show opened with a recording of each team member saying their names. “I owed it to me and Balenciaga and all the things we did here,” Demna said. “And it just felt like I could not do better than this.”
The garments were a study in construction and contradiction. A bell-shaped Guipure lace gown closed the show, built without boning, structured through layers of stretch for breathability. A sharp houndstooth suit referenced Cristóbal Balenciaga’s 1967 original. Oversized bombers, biker leathers, and slouchy trenches echoed Demna’s own wardrobe archetypes. “It was a study of ‘la bourgeoisie,’” he noted, “but through the lens of what I’ve always tried to do, make couture relevant.”
One suit was crafted in collaboration with a Neapolitan tailor, custom-made for a bodybuilder and then adapted for ten different body types, including Demna’s husband, BFRND. “The point was to show it’s not the garment that defines the body, but the body that defines the garment,” he explained.
Kim Kardashian walked Look 9, dressed in a duchesse satin slip and faux mink coat inspired by Elizabeth Taylor in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. She wore Taylor’s actual 15-carat diamond earrings, once gifted by Mike Todd. The moment captured Demna’s obsession with iconography, recontextualizing Old Hollywood within the modern-day media circus. Kardashian, like Taylor, is a woman shaped by gaze and gossip. Their parallel was deliberate.
Eva Herzigova wore a padded-hip bustier gown in neon yellow. Isabelle Huppert leaned fully into Parisian satire, swinging a lady bag from her elbow in black corseted trousers. Each muse embodied the show’s dual spirit—classic forms distorted by personality and attitude.
Despite his disruptive legacy, Demna’s farewell was soft. Thoughtful. Even optimistic. “I feel like it’s my coming out today,” he said with a laugh. “I never took a bow after my shows, but this time, it felt right.”
The show ended with Sade’s “No Ordinary Love” and a note on every seat: “Fashion lives on the edge of tomorrow, driven not by what we know but the thrill of discovering what’s next.” And with that, Demna stepped away from Balenciaga, leaving behind not just silhouettes but a philosophy. He made couture breathe again.
Now, as Paris Fashion Week moves on and Gucci prepares for a new chapter, one thing is clear: fashion’s edge has shifted, and Demna helped draw the line.
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