Demi Moore gave a teaser of what we could expect from Pierpaolo Piccioli’s Balenciaga haute couture debut—T-minus four weeks—when she stepped out at the Cannes Film Festival in an emerald green long dress suspended from a collar of gems, an ice blue bolero, and white opera gloves. One of the standouts in the Festival’s red carpet competition (which isn’t a real category but might as well be for all the online chatter it sparks), the look married Piccioli’s well-honed flare for unlikely color pairings with Cristobal Balenciaga’s iconic ballooning and cocooning shapes.
The striking volumes that are so central to the house’s archives are a big part of Piccioli’s story in ready-to-wear, as well. “The principle of this collection,” he said, “was to work not in 2D but 3D as Cristobal used to do.” Given that most of these are clothes for everyday living, not special events, the trick was to make sure they’re light and effortless. A key example is a white cotton poplin shirt that looks classic enough from the front, but from the reverse can be “inflated” by manipulating a drawstring—voilà a Balenciaga sway back. Similarly, some of the pants are edged with snaps up the outside seams: undo a few to create generous flared hems. Others are finished with grosgrain ribbons; the tighter the cinch the more Cristobal-ish the shape. A chocolate brown satin anorak unzips at the side to reveal a flash of citron yellow and a more blouson shape.
Over the Zoom, Piccioli made a point of sharing the weight of the garments; proudly confiding that even when layered they often totaled less than a single kilogram. Handbags and shoes got the same treatment; the nappa leather Rodeo bag looked particularly supple. Of course, attitude is as essential a part of effortlessness as what it says on a scale. On that note: he designed dresses that combined a t-shirt and a ball skirt into one pull-it-on-over-the-head piece, and layered long dresses—one draped like a Grecian toga, another embroidered all over with sequins—on top of loose-fit boy jeans. “Rather than couture going into the street, I wanted the vibe of the street going into the couture salon, to get this feeling of freedom,” he said. Couture, where Piccioli shines, comes in a month, but this is the clearest-eyed vision of his Balenciaga so far.
