The meaning of Balenciaga is a methodology. The process of creation as ideology, as identity, an expression of humanity and human invention. The début collection by Pierpaolo Piccioli as Creative Director of Balenciaga commemorates this essential component of the Maison, and of the work of Cristobal Balenciaga, bringing it into the present. Not homage, but recalibration.

Balenciaga’s creative practice placed humanity at the core of his approach. Aesthetic austerity, even severity, belies a physical lightness – a weightlessness, clothes conceived for and around a dynamic body. A crucial exchange exists between body and cloth, a shifting interrelationship. In precise gesture to his reasoning, here garments explore the space between fabric and form, the air between as a third dimension, a vital component of their construction.

Traces of the past are redefined for a future. Mnemonics of Cristobal Balenciaga’s oeuvre trigger instinctive reaction. Recollection rather than tribute, shadows of Balenciaga’s architectonic shapes are embedded in the actuality of today - bold and disruptive volumes applied to clothes that define our modern wardrobe. Leather jackets, chinos, t-shirts, knits, accessories. A vocabulary of contemporaneity, entirely transformed through approach.

Construction is paramount. Transformation of pieces is achieved through cut and proportion – through human endeavour. Sculptural silhouette is achieved not through internal structure, but through the cut of material, its own inherent intentionality - fabric, colour and shape as a singular gesture of determination. Knitwear translates archival fabrics through new materialities. The house’s signature gazar fabric is reinvented. Embroideries of flower and feather elements executed in self-fabric become an architectural rather than decorative proposition, another means to fundamentally redefine the body through a purity of cut.

Within the show space, a resurrected Parisian salon is scented with Getaria, the Balenciaga fragrance named after the birthplace of Cristobal Balenciaga. It envelops the room, invisible yet constantly present.