The anxiety-spiked, drug-fuelled, hyperstylised technicolour online messiness of generation Z was not on anyone’s bingo card for Balenciaga’s Paris fashion week show. Cristóbal Balenciaga dressed Ingrid Bergman and Jackie Kennedy; its current designer, Pierpaolo Piccioli, is revered as one fashion’s great romantics, the master of colour and poetry on the modern red carpet.
The Balenciaga show was a collaboration with Euphoria, HBO’s divisive teen drama. In a dark, cavernous venue on the Avenue des Champs-Élysées, the lights were low, the music (Rosalía, Labrinth) was loud. On flickering video screens, harlequinade images of nocturnal cityscapes segued into preview images from the long-awaited third series of Euphoria, which returns in April. A sweater was printed with a screen still of new cast member Danielle Deadwyler, smoking a cigarette in a low-cut blood-red top.
