Pierpaolo Piccioli is the new creative director of Balenciaga

Starting next July 10, Pierpaolo Piccioli will be the new creative director of Balenciaga. The announcement came today from Kering after days and days of rumors suggesting the news was imminent. After years spent at Valentino, now partially under Kering’s umbrella, and the move of Demna from Gucci, it will now be Pierpaolo Piccioli designing ready-to-wear and, above all, Haute Couture. His arrival should ideally “conclude” the brand’s upward trajectory, which began by rebooting from its legendary streetwear era to steadily elevate itself: in recent years, in fact, the brand has gone from being known for its sneakers to being known for its hit bags – especially the Rodeo. A new creative director couldn’t have arrived at a better time: Demna’s aesthetic at Balenciaga had already reached full maturity in the most recent shows, culminating in the most recent show which celebrated normcore while still containing all the classic stylistic elements of his long creative direction. Demna’s final Haute Couture show will instead be held this summer.

Piccioli’s appointment seems to open a more reassuring phase for the brand. After the provocations and darkness evoked by Demna, the brand is ready to embrace a vision that is perhaps less biting but also more traditional, one that moves closer — without irony or deconstruction — to the brand’s Haute Couture heritage. A very sensible move that, in fact, could also help bring sales volumes back to the levels desired by Kering after the debacle of the winter 2022 advertising campaign, from which the brand’s sales unfortunately