Balenciaga's spring 2017 men's collection explores extreme variations in silhouette and style, particularly in the line's boxy, wide-spread shoulders long hems. Demna Gvasalia, Balenciaga's new creative director (replacing Alexander Wang last year) built up quite the hype around the label's first ever menswear line. The clothes lived up to the talk: models swam in enormous, rectangular shapes as they strutted the runway today and looked geometrically gorgeous.
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Bright reds and minty blues added a more playful touch to the controlled seriousness of this collection, the first men's runway presentation in Balenciaga's 99-year history. Snakeskin heels, bold leathers, dangling chains, and high-waisted trousers kept the show feeling youthful and not androgynous. Still, the looks everyone will be talking about are Gvasalia's 90-degree shoulders, an imaginative twist in men's outerwear. We saw oversized jackets in Gvasalia's debut collection at Balenciaga in last fall's women's catwalk, but certainly not like this.
Gvasalia maintains his position as spokesperson for Vetements, the label founded by seven anonymous Parisian designers currently on every fashionista's lips.
"We all met and realised how frustrated we were," Gvasalia told The Business of Fashion on collaborating with his artistic friends. "We started to lose a sense of fun in fashion. We feel it is inevitable and crucial to create contemporary clothing. We are having a dialogue with today."
His taste for setting shows outside the world of traditional fashion houses (for instance, gay sex clubs) also got him a lot of celebrity buzz, from Jared Leto to Kanye West.
After today's show, the fashion world is excited to see wjat Gvasalia and his entourage of artistic minds will bring to the runway next.
See the full collection at BoF. Illustration by Hilton Dresden
