At the beginning of the show there was a dance as kind of allegory of the military actions that are unfolding between the two closely related nations. It is ended with a fiery kiss between two soldiers and quote from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s « The Little Prince »: “It is much more difficult to judge oneself than to judge others”.
If we talk about the collection, it seems as if the designer had a premonition of the future and created many items in the style of military body armor and knight’s armor. That reminded us of the importance of being protected in these difficult times.
And of course, the «most relevant poignant and beautiful show of the Paris Fashion Week», as Olivier Zahm co-founder of PURPLE magazine said, was a Balenciaga show. It was imbued with many symbolic meanings. The show began with a poem by the Ukrainian poet Oleksandr Oles “Live, Ukraine, live for beauty”. The decorations were very impressive! It was made as if the models were bursting through a snowstorm with hastily packed bags, like the ones Ukrainians are now forced to flee their countries with. The entire collection is predominantly in dark colors, but even in this impenetrable darkness there is «a place for hope» – blue and yellow looks were the finial accent in this show.
Before the show, guests received blue and yellow T-shirts and a message by the creative director of the brand, Demna Gvasalia. The designer said that the war in Ukraine reminded him of the events in his native Georgia in the early 1990s: «The war in Ukraine has triggered the pain of a past trauma I have carried in me since 1993, when the same thing happened in my home country and I became a forever refugee. This is why working on this show this week was so incredibly hard for me. Because in a time like this, fashion loses its relevance and it’s actual right to exist. Fashion week feels like some kind of an absurdity. This show needs no explanation. It is a dedication to fearlessness, to resistance, and to the victory of love and peace».
