Creative director Pierpaolo Piccioli reimagines familiar wardrobe staples through intricate construction and softer silhouettes.
Balenciaga’s Summer 27 collection is a personal exploration of couture as a working methodology and ideology, a mindset for modern creation that can infiltrate the culture of a fashion house.
Techniques originating in the 55th Balenciaga Couture Collection are applied to a spectrum of ready-to-wear clothing for both women and men. Through this, a trace of humanity can be found in every garment, a quality that defines them, as Balenciaga.
A wardrobe of prototypical ready-to-wear garments—denim jeans, shirts, t-shirts, bombers, accessories—are redefined through studies of cut and construction, and their proximity to the hand. Pieces begin their life in the house’s ateliers, using processes of draping and forming to determine their architecture.
Couture is treated as a laboratory of possibilities. Rather than something unobtainable, it functions as a dynamic engine to drive the house, a systematic manner to reshape everyday garments. Bias cutting modifies the language of identifiable pieces such as evening dresses, but also jeans and shirts, men’s suiting. Their authenticity remains, yet their rapport with the body alters.
Women’s and men’s shoes are pliant, malleable, soft against the foot: the Wave Thong Sandal, a flat in toile canvas, the heeled Dahlia Mule, and the new unstructured Lounge Sneaker. Bags such as the Nodo or Silhou Tote are supple, executed in leather, shaped and draped by hand and organic; Bow Mask Sunglasses have artisan-braided arms; Getaria seashell-inspired jewelry feels natural, personal, real.
Every facet of the wardrobe comes to reflect Cristóbal Balenciaga’s primary philosophy of the body as the basis, expressed in a new manner. Silhouettes recall Balenciaga antecedents, gestures evoked through pragmatic measures like drawstrings and buttoned collars, while fabrication can transform physicality and attitude through the most direct action. Freedom of gesture, freedom of movement, freedom of choice.
In the Philippines, Balenciaga is exclusively distributed by Stores Specialists, Inc., and is located at Greenbelt 5 and Shangri-La Plaza East Wing. Visit ssilife.com.ph or follow @ssilifeph on Facebook and Instagram, and @ssilife on TikTok for more information.
