Demna's farewell to Balenciaga for Couture FW26 The artistic director bids goodbye to the fashion house with a romantic and diplomatic collection

There are many ways to say goodbye. You can throw a grand party, be the center of attention, write letters, share posts, stay silent and wait for others to announce your departure. Demna, who for years—ten, to be precise—brought sensational shows to the runway as the creative director of Balenciaga, from snowy catwalks to Shanghai skylines, this time chose to be romantic yet diplomatic. Within the walls of the salon on Avenue George V, the maison and its no-longer-artistic-director welcomed a radiant crowd, including Pinault, the no-longer-CEO of the Kering conglomerate, and Pierpaolo Piccioli, Balenciaga’s new leader. While a year ago the soundtrack included a meditation recording intended to lead the listener «on the path to happiness», this time the background to the show consisted of the models’ names pronounced by themselves and finally No Ordinary Love by Sade. «Fashion lives on the edge of tomorrow – driven not by what we know but the thrill of discovering what comes next,» read the handwritten note placed on each seat. «It is the expression of our need to evolve, to make sense of change before it arrives, to dress the future before it has a name.» Today, some attendees wore past couture by Demna for Balenciaga: in a sense, it’s quite true that clothes shape the future before it even happens. 

Long coats with arched shoulders made their entrance after the mirrored doors of the salon opened. The first look, a smooth and concealing white suit, outlined the central theme of the collection, symbolizing how Demna’s vision has forever changed the shapes of contemporary fashion. Following were long, very long, black coats paired with pointed double-buckle shoes and shabby-looking briefcases—later followed by one completely golden. The Balenciaga man is composed, whether wearing perfectly tailored eveningwear or oversized jackets and trousers, while the woman (once again represented by ambassadors Isabel Huppert and Kim Kardashian) is stunning and majestic, a glamorous icon from another time who enters 2025 boldly through dresses that gloriously embody the current standards of beauty, with an extremely narrow waist, padded hips, and a high, motionless décolleté. There is color, beyond black and white, but it’s rare and delicate, like the Cinderella blue and lemon yellow silk dresses. 

Fur and rhinestones, mature models with regal poise, houndstooth coats and lace frame the collection in Paris, the backdrop of the newly released lookbook, while the elevation of trench coats and the reworking of knitwear—transformed from everyday items into cinematic villain garments and opera premiere gowns—infuse modernity. Demna’s signature is felt in every corner of this Couture, in every centimeter of the leather total looks that envelop the body like a glove, in every fold of fabric of the oversized bombers. Kim Kardashian’s look, a sensual slip dress covered by an old Hollywood fur, reminds the audience of all the times Balenciaga has made front-page news in the last ten years, undergoing public scrutiny from the public eye under the spotlight of social media (for better or worse), while the dress with a full skirt and rigid lace petticoat reinforces Demna’s ability to make couture avant-garde—not a regret of bygone times but an open window toward what is to come. And this is precisely the point that the new creative director of Gucci wants us to reflect on: fashion, no matter how fascinated it may be by past aesthetics and the glory of its history-makers, has the task of rewriting the rules of style and moving forward. As he wrote in the note, what is designed today is what will be worn tomorrow. And tomorrow, the day after, and the day after that, there will always be someone wearing Demna’s Balenciaga.