Balenciaga’s Demna on cancel culture and self-therapy: the Kering brand’s creative director chats Cristóbal’s legacy, Michelle Yeoh and that teddy bear campaign scandal – interview

Aug 9 , 2023

Balenciaga creative director Demna Gvasalia showing his true colours: pictured with a fully branded Kim Kardashian and wearing a T-shirt in the colors of the Ukrainian flag, at the Balenciaga fall/winter 2022-23 fashion show in Paris-March 2022. Photo: Instagram

Balenciaga creative director Demna’s illustrious career has seen him dress celebrities from Kim Kardashian and Kanye West to Cardi B and Michelle Yeoh

Here he chats exclusively to Style about the enduring relevance of streetwear, his love for haute couture, the perils of social media … and that controversial teddy bear ad

The first time I met Balenciaga’s creative director Demna, he was clad in a black mask that covered his entire face. It’s something of a trademark look: he and Kim Kardashian both wore similar coverings over their heads for the 2021 Met Gala.

Yet at our encounter in May 2022, almost a year later, he held court faceless, answering journalists’ questions and greeting celebrities such as former collaborator Kanye West and introducing the brand’s spring 2023 show at the New York Stock Exchange (the first time it had ever been used for a fashion show).

Kim Kardashian and Balenciaga creative director Demna Gvasalia at the 2021 Met Gala in New York. Photo: Getty Images

Back then, Balenciaga was on a roll, with viral items selling out everywhere, and projects like the summer 2022 show – which featured a mini episode of The Simpsons – racking up millions of views on YouTube.

The setting of my second meeting with Demna (whose surname is Gvasalia – he only goes by his given name) couldn’t have been more different from the mayhem of that New York Sunday morning. On the eve of the brand’s autumn/winter 2023 haute couture show in July, the 42-year-old greeted me calmly at Balenciaga’s Paris headquarters – chilled, welcoming, and simply attired in a black coat.

Demna, who lives outside Geneva in Switzerland and travels to Paris once a month, can seem an intimidating prospect to those familiar with his runway shenanigans and the dystopian vibe of his shows. Born in Georgia, the former Soviet republic, he later moved with his family to Germany. After earning a master’s degree in fashion design at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp, he cut his teeth at Maison Margiela and Louis Vuitton before teaming up with his brother Guram to launch buzzy label Vetements, which became the talk of the town in Paris and beyond when it launched in 2014.

Balenciaga’s couture salon at 10 Avenue George V in Paris. Photo: Balenciaga

Melding streetwear with conceptualism and a touch of couture, Vetements injected a much-needed dose of energy into the fashion of the times, leading to Demna’s elevation to creative director of Balenciaga in 2015.

He brought the same subversive attitude to the storied brand, founded in 1919 by Spanish couturier Cristóbal Balenciaga and once the quintessential haute couture label. Since its acquisition by Gucci owner Kering in 2006, the label had focused on more lucrative ready-to-wear and accessory lines. Under Demna, Balenciaga quickly became Kering’s success story, delivering one blockbuster collection after another and thriving even at the height of the pandemic, thanks to the partnership between the designer and CEO Cédric Charbit.