From my personal point of view, as creative director, I will have to question absolutely everything now. It really changes my way of working, which has previously been more instinctive; doing something that would be seen as maybe provocative just because I was thinking, Oh, that’s fun. This is part of my learning: I will have a more mature and serious approach to everything I release as an idea or an image. I have decided to go back to my roots in fashion as well as to the roots of Balenciaga, which is making quality clothes – not making image or buzz.
Learning from the mistake also includes educating ourselves on this issue and contributing to the actual cause. We are partnering with a nonprofit organisation called National Children’s Alliance (NCA) for a multiyear partnership, which I find absolutely amazing because it will help thousands of kids in the process of overcoming trauma and dealing with their mental health. It’s the one thing that makes me happy about this whole horrible situation: to do something good out of it.
From a creative point of view, how are you thinking, wanting, wishing to take Balenciaga forward?
I have always believed that I have grown and evolved through the hardships in my life, and this has been the very biggest one. What I realised of this situation is that making clothes is what makes me most happy. I was cutting and sewing garments with my team throughout most of December last year. I reconnected with where I started, and I realised the importance of it to me. It’s a serious job, you know, to make clothes. It’s not about creating image or buzz or any of those things. I am back to making jackets. That’s where this house started, and that’s where I started as a designer.
Many of those ideas [from December] will be part of the show in March. I had this indescribable desire to make things. I went back to cutting jackets and pants, experimenting with patterns and shapes. I cannot explain this in any other way than I sheltered myself doing what I love: making clothes. This is exactly what I will be focusing on at Balenciaga from now on. I want to be more manual and hands-on rather than just directing the process. I realised how much I miss that, and how much it makes me feel happy.
You’ve used the word provocative, and a certain amount of provocation has certainly been part of your vision for Balenciaga. Why has that been the case?
The provocative aspect of my work often got misinterpreted and misunderstood, and I no longer feel like applying it to my designs. I often used some kind of wit in my design language, and it has often been deemed provocative. For me it was more about having fun and not taking fashion too seriously. Despite what many people may have suspected, the issue with the campaigns was absolutely not in any way part of my provocative design language – never, ever would I have an idea to mess around with such an awful and horrible thing as child abuse.
Your career at Balenciaga has often taken an unflinching view of the reality of the world – climate disaster, for instance – and it has also had moments that were joyful: The Simpsons red carpet show, say, or the “Sunglasses at Night” ’80s pop video. But it has felt in the last year, perhaps less, that things have been definitely much darker at Balenciaga – heavy, bleak.
I do think that has been the case. When we are in creative work, we cannot completely block our, maybe, inner state. How we feel about things, about pain, emotionally or psychologically, and that bleeds into our work, whether we want it to or not. There was something in me that was transmitted through the work and made people feel it too. It was always kind of there, but it was, as you say, broken up by the fun elements of something a bit lighter – let’s, you know, laugh and not be so dramatic. But last year… I don’t know what it is related to…
There was no specific trigger?
Maybe something from the past is coming through. It’s something I can’t really explain. This is the reason I want to change my approach, in the way I make collections and the way I show them as well, because it’s very hard to keep them apart. I focus on my collections, because that’s the emphasis [for me] on how I express myself, but when you speak about [heaviness in my work], it’s about set design, the type of shows I made. So that’s going to change as well. The show will become more about showing the collection than creating a moment. I’ve realised that that can take a lot of attention away from my actual work, which is making clothes. I want to make sure that’s what people are looking at, because I think my value as a creative is designing the product and not being a showman.
At the end of last year, the house’s Instagram account featured a montage of Cristóbal Balenciaga salon presentations from back in the day. Those were definitely about being a designer making clothes – not creating a spectacle of a show. Do those Cristóbal presentations figure in your current thinking?
Yes, exactly. The emphasis is on my love for the craft of making clothes now. I have already referenced that in our couture collections, but now it is going to be applied to all the rest. That is ultimately why I do what I do. My interest lies in armholes, sleeve heads, and shoulder lines, not in making seasonal campaigns, even if that is also part of my job. It was deliberate to end last year with the video edit of footage from Cristóbal Balenciaga’s collections from the ’60s, to remind our audience what this historic house stands for and where it comes from.
