The Paradox at the Heart of Gucci x Balenciaga

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“For me, Alessandro Michele showed that he could marshal his design team in a different direction at a crucial moment. That was more meaningful than a double-logo game,” writes CathyHoryn of Gucci’s use of the Balenciaga logo

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Left to right: Celine, Balenciaga, Gucci. Photo-Illustration: by The Cut; Photos: Courtesy of Celine, Balenciaga, Gucci Collaborations in fashion are generally in aid of commerce. One brand is getting something from another — street cred, buzz — and everyone is counting on the public to mindlessly lap it up, to not care about the cravenness of the idea. One exception was the 2020 collection of Dries Van Noten and Christian Lacroix, which nobody saw coming.

Gucci Photo: Courtesy of Gucci This is hardly true. Designers have been sampling, lifting, hacking for decades. Think of Marc Jacobs’s collections based on the work of Pierre Cardin, or Yohji Yamamoto, or Rei Kawakubo. Any designer can co-opt or subvert a label — think of Miguel Adrover’s repurposing of a Louis Vuitton Monogram bag for the back of a coat. The fact that Alessandro Michele, Gucci’s creative director, chose to hack Gvasalia’s work is an acknowledgment of the latter’s power.

But, frankly, in the end, I didn’t see the point of the Balenciaga riff except as a publicity vehicle. And Michele didn’t expand on one of Gvasalia’s most intriguing ideas — the suit jacket with padded hips. He largely left the shape intact. Felipe Oliveira Baptista, the designer at Kenzo, remarked recently that he wanted “loud, beautiful things.” His collection, like those of Stella McCartney and Raf Simons, hovered between lockdown utility and post-pandemic exuberance expressed in a blast of color and pattern. Many of us share Baptista’s longing, yet don’t care for the middle ground proposed by some designers.

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