Balenciaga Comments on the 'Future of Beauty'
From boxy suits to larger-than-life ball gowns with bold colors, Balenciaga never fails to push the boundaries of fashion. In last month’s Paris Fashion week, Balenciaga’s Spring 2020 collection pushed its creativity to new heights. The new designs are not only accompanied by overemphasized features like huge shoulders and oversized cuts, but also noticeably, the absurdly exaggerated facial features.
Swedish model Elsa Sjökvist wasn’t totally unrecognizable as she came down the runway in a peak-shouldered dress, but her cheekbones were hard to overlook
Balenciaga’s creative director Demna Gvasalia asked makeup artist Inge Grognard to extend the exaggerated elements of the collection to facial features. With a resounding yes, Grognard used prosthetic facial makeup to resemble extreme cheekbones and enlarged lips, transforming models into unrecognizable figures.
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““Demna works a lot on volumes to reshape the body and he wanted to do the same on faces without changing the strong character of the person involved””
The virtually imperceptible makeup with the oversized pieces together emphasize the overarching theme of excess and empowerment that Balenciaga has always stood for. Yet, it also seems to reflect today people’s obsession with plastic surgery.
Brazilian beauty Jamily Wernke Meurer’s blown-up pout with “a few botched lip injection treatments”
“My actual quest at Balenciaga is to create a modern luxury brand that is inclusive, that is sustainable, that is involved and that is avant-garde, because that is in its DNA,” said Gvasalia in her previous interviews. In Gvasalia’s ideal future, people gravitate to a fashion brand not only for the look, but for the values it upholds. He wants to use garments as a tool of communication and want Balenciaga to be socially involved. With this ideology and his unorthodox approach, Gvasalia made Balenciaga a fastest-growing brand in the past years.
Whether it is a social comment to the new beauty trend or a playful design of the runway show, Balenciaga continues to be a disruptor that challenges conventional definitions of fashion and luxury.
