New chapter in global fashion
Georgian designer presents debut collection for Balenciaga

Young Georgian designer Demna Gvasalia is making his mark in Paris as he debuts his first collection for a luxury European fashion house.

Less than a year after Gvasalia was named the new creative director of Paris-based Balenciaga, the young Georgian designer presented his Balenciaga Fall/Winter 2016 collection in front of industry experts and international fashionistas.

The show opened with a section of padded hip suits, skirts and dresses, each with an imposed hourglass silhouette. Most were in grey or tan checks and wore thigh-high boots.

Fashion journalists assessed Gvasalia’s debut collection as a huge success that focused on the femininity of the female body.

"Demna Gvasalia gave couture house codes and current new voice in his Balenciaga debut”, wrote one journalist, while another said "the successful translation of a fashion house's heritage by a new designer is a rare and difficult feat but Gvasalia rose to the occasion”.

Balenciaga fashion house reported the theme of the Balenciaga Fall/Winter 2016 collection was to transform how women felt into how they looked.

The three-quarter sleeve, the stand-away collar, the skirt running slightly ahead of one’s walk. The rapport between a body and their clothes. A couture attitude. Balenciaga was built on the relationship between couturier, client and cloth,” reads the press release.

Balenciaga defined Gvasalia’s collection as "a reimagining of the work of Cristobal Balenciaga – a wardrobe of absolute contemporaneity and realism imbued with the attitude of haute couture. A translation, not a reiteration. A new chapter.”

Fellow designers including Gucci’s Alessandro Michele and Jacquemus’s Simon Porte Jacquemus attended the show to support Gvasalia.

Read the ins and outs of Gvasalia’s collection in the chief critic’s review from Vogue, who highlighted nine memorable moments of the show.

Meanwhile the Archive Editor of Vogue.com Laird Borrelli-Persson made a parallel between the founder of Balenciaga Cristobal Balenciaga and Demna Gvasalia, saying they had "more in common than you think”.

Borrelli-Persson said both designers chose Paris as their home, both preferred unconventional mannequins, both cultivated an air of mystery, both designed for a niche audience and both disrupted the system.