Balenciaga SS 2010

 
  

Opener: Kasia Struss
Closer: Patricia van der Vliet




Surprises:
Look who’s wearing look #13. None other than Orlando Bloom’s hooker, Miranda Kerr. Hopefully, she didn’t confuse this with a Victoria’s Secret show and winked at the end of the runway…hopefully. She translates into high fashion well enough, don’t you think?

I love Cathy Horyn and her frank, bluntness in addressing designers and fashion shows. So I'll leave you with a review from her expert eye and sharp tongue/ pen.

In one of those periodic mood swings, Nicolas Ghesquiere today took Balenciaga back to the streets. The clothes had a hard urban edge, beginning with hooded vests that combined leather and leather woven with other materials for an industrial texture. Ankle boots repeated the illusion. Last season, in the same gold-and-cream salon at the Crillon hotel, Mr. Ghesquiere offered a kind of “Belle de Jour” elegance, all drapery and fancy black stockings. Yesterday, after the Rochas show, Agnès Boulard — French television’s feisty Mademoiselle Agnès — and her collaborator Loïc Prigent were needling me for predictions. Would the French spring ready-to-wear collections be more frigid lady or cool street?

Well, she had her answer this morning at the Crillon. Sort of.

Although the Balenciaga show was indeed graphic, tough and linear, with skinny black leathers, grainy-looking shifts slashed with yellow and turquoise, and other dresses that blended leather strips and sheer fabric, I think the clothes actually expressed a dualism in Mr. Ghesquiere’s work. He has been thinking about Balenciaga too long — about the past, the present, the architectural shapes in the archive — for the label to be one thing or the other.

If you consider this collection strictly in terms of its street vibe, some people might not find it new enough. But I think the difference is the deconstruction. The technique feels updated in Mr. Ghesquiere’s hands — or, at any rate, controlled and polished. The most successful look was the sleeveless chemise with the graphic combination of ultra-soft black leather strips and sheer jersey. They’re a very loose, boxy shape, and they seem to lap around the body as if wrapped. There are also outfits that mix a leather top with what appears to be bonded cotton print. It’s hard to tell the materials apart. And in a way that’s what is interesting about the collection. Boundaries are blurred.

-Cathy Horyn of the New York Times
(source)