The designer’s farewell show came complete with Kim Kardashian, Nicole Kidman, Lauren Sánchez Bezos — and other greatest hits.
It’s rare that anyone gets to curate their own legacy. Usually that’s the prerogative of the future, something that can only happen in retrospect.
But on Wednesday in Paris, Demna, the mononymic designer who has defined Balenciaga for the past 10 years, transforming it from a symbol of austere and unattainable perfection into a pop culture phenomenon, was able to use his final couture show to do exactly that. In March it was announced that he was leaving the brand to go to Gucci, but rather than cut ties immediately, he was given the opportunity to design his exit.
Now, that is elegant. And so it was.
The audience was rife with the celebrities who were the avatars of his disruptive, initially shocking, style: Nicole Kidman and Cardi B; Lorde and Katy Perry. Even Lauren Sánchez Bezos, fresh from her Venice wedding, was there.
The show itself was chockablock with characters, including Kim Kardashian channeling Elizabeth Taylor in a champagne duchesse-satin slip dress, a tawny fur coat actually made of feathers trailing from her shoulders and, in her ears, 15 carats of diamond drop earrings that Mike Todd gave Ms. Taylor, on loan from the jeweler Lorraine Schwartz. Also Isabelle Huppert offering Left Bank haute beatnik in skinny black capris and a black turtleneck, a hidden corset turning her into an hourglass.
The soundtrack was composed of the names of those who had helped Demna over the decade, recited in their own voices.
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