I created many things, but it can’t last. When I started, there were only two seasons, we had the runway show and a few extra commercial pieces, but by the end there were 15 collections per season, which is more than 30 collections per year. Within the studio he has a reputation for an unerring rigor, polite and firm, able to pick out a faulty stitch almost instantaneously. “Today, Balenciaga is more what Nicolas made of it, than what people may remember of Cristóbal,” he adds. One example is the biker, a leather perfecto I completely retooled but, of course, didn’t invent. I may decide to fulfill that mission again and I’ll enjoy it as I always have. NICOLAS GHESQUIÈRE. Kritiker bezeichneten ihn nur noch als Mr. Zeitgeist, Genie oder fantastischen Futuristen. “It’s Patti Smith, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Jeanne d’Arc, and [Ellen] Ripley in Alien (1979). It had more or less been forgotten. GHESQUIÈRE: I like a masculine attitude in a woman, which can be very sensual and sexy. Ghesquière laughs thinking on the contraptions he introduced at Balenciaga, acrid smells that emanated from specially installed ovens, laminating presses, and fusing machines, and how it all started by dying cargo pants in a friend’s bathtub. Personally, he was very gentle with me, kind and funny.” They are now good friends and casual asides while socializing led to Connelly starring in campaigns for Spring/Summer 2008 and Fall/Winter 2009, two of Ghesquière’s most noted collections. They take up space. Naturally, this takes a toll on creativity even more so when the designer in question takes credit for an endless string of industry changing trends, blockbuster products like the Lariat bag, and wields an obvious influence on other labels – witness the “Balenciaga Did It First” Tumblr phenomenon. Price: £1,200. People know what they like and don’t like. For Kaliardos, co-founder of culture bible Visionaire, and a well-recognized make-up artist, Ghesquière’s magnetism was based, above all, on his talent: “Fashion needs its icons, it’s créateurs. People only slightly older than me saw a lot of their friends disappear with the emergence of AIDS. I never worked with Azzedine Alaïa, but now I am close with him and for me, people like this are models. Critics have often labeled Ghesquière a futurist and he undoubtedly shares a Generation X fascination for science fiction (he also likes horror movies), yet his garments manifest less the wistfulness of fantasy than a technical discipline of material, structure, and self. Seit 16 Monaten forscht die Welt zur Corona-Krise. Rei Kawakubo works with her husband, but it’s fundamentally a creative vision. “I always try to bring him with me but without his knowledge because it’s just my wardrobe,” she explained with a sparkle of poetic license. It is not a question of inventing, but identifying a new way to make things, to present them, the rhythm of selling them. I’m not saying it was better before: today there are so many more possibilities, the profession is structured, there are established training programs and it’s appreciated. I learned it had to crystallize the heritage of the house, but people expected it to be modern. We must have made pants with up to 50 pieces! I really respected the old Balenciaga fragrances; after all, the house survived on them, Fleeting Moments, Quadrille, Ho Hang, and Le Dix. Should it even be called couture? Mode hatte er nebenbei beim Kaffeekochen gelernt; mit 19 im Atelier bei Jean-Paul Gaultier. I cherished the idea of a laboratory. The role of imagination in your work is essential. A company announcement Monday … How do the fragrances play into your concept of seduction? He helped me discover and dare things. I liked that it had a slightly destroyed elegance. If you ask me, there is only one place where there’s real research and that’s Balenciaga. As if upstaging the event’s over-dressed, pumped-up glamour, Ghesquière created a gown of ethereal, skin-colored rags. It was laborious and there are countless stories like it, Ghesquière says. We consume images at very different resolutions, with varying degrees of information. Nel 2002, la star di Balenciaga, Nicolas Ghesquiere, ha imitato il lavoro di Kaisik Wong, un designer di San Francisco. My answer was firstly that the label deserved no less. It wasn’t until 1997 when Nicolas Ghesquière took up the mantle as the natural successor to Balenciaga and changed the house’s fortunes. Item is rare vintage Nicolas Ghesquière piece from S/S 201. Alaïa welcomes his close friendships with patrons and models directly into his process and his brand image, something you also do. Had revenues been too modest? Until, in the 60s, he’s producing the most innovative and sometimes revolutionary designs of his career.” For Bowles, Ghesquière’s greatest strengths align with the master: “The constant research, the details, the sophisticated use of inspirations, even when he takes overt Balenciaga inspirations, it’s filtered through sensibilities that are uniquely his own and relevant to the age in which he’s working. Ghesquière was an assistant at Jean Paul Gaultier before he landed the job doing licensing for Balenciaga. You don’t know heartbreak until it happens in Paris. We made it in cashmere and created a new icon. There’s Pierre Hardy. American support was amazing and I am so grateful. At that time, Balenciaga was with Gucci Group. CHECK24 Vergleichsportal Finanzen GmbH80331 München, Kaufland Dienstleistung GmbH & Co. KG74172 Neckarsulm, Sympra GmbHStuttgart - Süd, Stuttgart - Nord, Stuttgart - West, Stuttgart - Mitte, Nicolas Ghesquière verlässt das Label Balenciaga. I felt that I was incredibly welcome, without prejudices, that a label like Balenciaga should experience a revival. Globalization has brought many things, including the internationalization of a feminine aesthetic that I boil down to the character of Carrie Bradshaw in Sex in the City. When I did Spring/Summer 2002 with stonewashed patchwork cargo pants, the colors were based on Hollywood Chewing Gum. Armin Laschet und ich - was einen verbindet, wenn man eine Heimat teilt, in der man nach dem Prinzip lebt: "Du kannst nicht beides, versprechen und halten." Ghesquière was an assistant at Jean Paul Gaultier before he landed the job doing licensing for Balenciaga. Absolutely. Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Discover Pictures VII, 2012. At Balenciaga, what have been the personal relationships that have influenced you the most? You’ve left Balenciaga, but are you taking time to breathe? I’ve always remixed elements from different aspects of our culture like this. Through its varied embodiments the replicant is always true to itself, dispassionate, beautifully engineered, and as a result, menacingly sexy. This confederacy suits me quite well today. It’s that slippage. She’s not afraid to be popular, even commercial but she’s also punk. The sets uncanny resemblance to the hallways on Stanley Kubrick’s Discovery One spacecraft from 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), alludes to the artist’s love of 60s and 70s culture, its obsessions with the military industrial-complex, hallucinogens, and organic modernism, a love she shares with Ghesquière. It’s very inspiring. I’m much more interested by that than a global distributor of down-market clothes. You need a prototype. What is the role of vulnerability or even trash in feminine seduction? I remember Bergdorf Goodman was determined that I make evening gowns, so I tried to do it my way. Missing belt can be made to order. It was like my first communion in the Church of Cristóbal. It’s not enough to simply have an iconic address. Madman’s work.”, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Discover Pictures IV, 2012. Nicolas Ghesquière (centre) in The September Issue: what next for the influential designer? Nicolas Ghesquière (Comines, 9 maggio 1971) è uno stilista francese. I suggested we work with Coty to develop the first perfume; Olivier Polge was the nose. I think it does start with sustainability and no one has found a solution. There is some discolouration and scratches on the zipper pull (please see photo). The whole industry is based on timing. As a young designer, you took an unmistakably unique approach to retail expansion at Balenciaga, not surprisingly. Nicolas Ghesquière schuf bei Balenciaga Mode, die ihrer Zeit voraus war. Ultimately, this transformation underpins whatever recognition we get. The shoulder is never perfect, as Cristóbal said. Nach 15 Jahren verlässt Nicolas Ghesquière das Label Balenciaga. She wore the opening look from Spring/Summer 2013 to the L.A. premiere of On the Road, days before PPR’s fateful announcement. From a quiet start as Balenciaga’s creative director in 1997, then 25-year-old Ghesquière rapidly collected billet-doux from the press. I didn’t want to play the game anymore, at least in that way. Der 41-Jährige sei frustriert gewesen, sagen Insider. For me, it means having both a micro and a macro vision. I’m really happy to have had a small taste, things were already changing, of the era of les créateurs before the advent of the megabrands. An ever-changing database, it supplies what Buonomano calls the “chromosomes” behind every collection. You have to be very demanding on finishes, on draping, the choice of materials, how they are glued or stitched together, how they embed, how they clash or merge. What goals should the industry set in the coming years to be sustainable on any of these levels? NICOLAS GHESQUIÈRE has finally spoken out about his departure from Balenciaga, revealing that he decided to leave the fashion house after 15 years because he "ended up feeling too alone".The designer's exit from the label was confirmed in November last year. He didn’t rely on people to get where he is. If anyone can synthesize today’s opposing trends it will be the master of radical fusion. There has to be a sort of apprenticeship phase, where we talk about how things are made, about luxury in the Western sense. Was it simply ignoring it? With the digital lens, you are right, I got even more demanding! By Feifei Sun Nov. 05, 2012. That Spring/Summer 2007 collection – what we called the “robots” – was a very stiff show, with embroidered, metallic leggings. Demna Gvasalia has catapulted Balenciaga into a postmodern era where street meets couture, dad fashion is high fashion and everything is oversized. You have to be all-terrain. I love sharing things, building things together. 1997 marked a momentous year in fashion. Oder besser noch ein Mega-Unternehmen mit Mode, Taschen und Düften. Was ist denn da passiert? Flora Botanica was the second fragrance and with this one I asked them to name the target: They said, “It has to be very young and to relate to your fashion, Ghesquière for Balenciaga.” I met Kristen Stewart on a Bruce Weber shooting when she was 13-years-old and we got along well. I simply didn’t have enough time to search for new, sufficiently interesting ideas and I had to keep churning out proposals, meeting deadlines, taking up gigantic studios that required interacting with greater numbers of people and in the process I realized I would loose what defined me. Nicolas Ghesquière, (born May 9, 1971, Comines, France), French fashion designer who, as creative director of Balenciaga (1997–2012) and as artistic director of Louis Vuitton (2013–), earned a reputation as the most original designer of his generation.. Ghesquière was born in northern France but was raised in Loudun, in the western part of the country. While Prada, Gucci, and everyone else were deploying carbon-copy stores everywhere – Prada shifted of course – Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster and I wanted our boutiques to be varied, to integrate the local urban context. Like Azzedine, it’s inspiring to see that there are several paths to success. At Balenciaga, where he worked for more than 12 years, he created some of the strongest looks of the 2000s. Nicholas Ghesquière for Balenciaga, late 2007. We can all do a little something, but I think we’re all waiting to see which group will pull ahead and lead on this issue. It’s a family. “You want a happy ending for houses like this, but designers no longer have the luxury of running a house with ultimate creative freedom without concern about every dollar and cent made off a handbag,” he adds. This wasn’t very glamorous – it meant designing suits and funeral clothes for the Japanese market. It was so incredible for me to see that after a few collections he could repeat certain things, like a genetic evolution of forms. Today’s offerings are plumbing the DNA of aging houses and resurrecting the ideas of sometimes long-dead designers. “His designs can in turn be austere and then audacious and there’s something about the tension between the two that I’ve always found really interesting,” explained actor Jennifer Connelly. He can be endlessly reinterpreted by other talents who have bold styles and that’s how he is a common denominator, everyone has a version of his oeuvre, because he has entered the collective unconscious. He managed to make them luxurious by their realization and intriguing, by inventing and mixing silhouettes in a new way. They became an item people purchased at $1000 each, and we must have sold 2,500 pieces, which was enormous and an immediate success for us. Until, all of a sudden everybody thought ‘this is wonderful. On the morning of February 28, 2013, after 172 months, 31 fashion weeks, a global retail expansion counting 161 sales points, a coveted bag, and two new fragrances, the grand French maison of Balenciaga offered its first collection without the nimble hand that so spectacularly resuscitated the label and hooked fashion’s fickle heart along the way – Nicolas Ghesquière. From the well-heeled Avenue George V, number 10, the eponymous maison tailored a legacy that cultural historians, aficionados, and designers alike recognize as one of the most original, innovative, and faultlessly elegant of the 20th century, and thanks to Ghesquière, the 21st. Hold on. Every generation may reinvent the way fashion looks but technology, resource management, and emerging markets are changing the way it works and so is financial speculation. Nicolas Ghesquière for Balenciaga Runway Fall 2008 black and white color block dress with structured shoulders, bow accent at waist, concealed zip closure at back and built-in bra. The embellishment was just a scarf. BALENCIAGA BY NICOLAS GHESQUIÈRE F/W 1998 LEATHER COAT. GDPR-proof. Ghesquière appears as blissful about this moment in his career as the 18th century salons overlooking the Seine, to which he decamped with a cadre of loyal followers, are light filled and ornamented. Ghesquière has long been a fashion trailblazer. Rei Kawakubo obviously has great means now, but it all starts with an individual’s determination and individual perspective. While a moody and independent strain of Japanese, Austrian, and Belgian designers started to show in Paris, countering the stylistic exuberance of the 80s, LVMH, Gucci, and soon enough PPR were busy consolidating and whipping up the megabling commercial frenzy that is sine qua non today. Everything’s been done. Balenciaga by Nicolas Ghesquière. Were there disagreements about how fast to grow global, how far to reach down-market, how accessible luxury should become? Cult pieces include voluminous puffer coats and logo tops, as well as hourglass jackets. Balenciaga After Death: Nicolas Ghesquière. 11 talking about this. Thanks to Ghesquière, Stewart has learned that fashion doesn’t necessarily conceal like a mask but can spark aspects of one’s personality that are otherwise sedated: “You can play any character you can imagine in these clothes.” Renowned make-up artist Pat McGrath, who has created everything from organic to alien effects for Ghesquière on recent shows and campaigns, accentuates the fact that, “There is always a touch of reality that has to remain through the make-up. Email; Print; Share. NICOLAS GHESQUIÈRE: In a way it’s true. Fassbinder’s bimbos are more interesting than what you see on catwalks today. I’ve wanted to do this for a long time. Olivier Saillard, director of the fashion-focused musée Galliera in Paris, cherishes Ghesquière: “In the schizophrenic landscape of resurrected brands, he was the source of a true renaissance, possibly one of the greatest talents we have.” Actor Chloë Sevigny, who says she and Ghesquière synched like “gangbusters” from the moment they met in New York and already owns “a rack full” of his designs, has been on a Balenciaga shopping spree, “buying up as much as I can, because I’m so sad about him leaving.” Shortly before flying to Paris, Vogue’s U.S. creative director confided with winded distress, “I despair when I hear that he’s no longer working.” Grace Coddington, who wields a critical eye on fashion as choosy as her career is long, has reason to be upset: “What Nicolas does really drives fashion forward. “I am not sure the managers understood the depth of the potential and how far it could go.”, Cristóbal Balenciaga, a Basque Spaniard, registered his company in Paris on July 7, 1937, owning only five percent of the shares. The models are porn stars but they are commanding their sexuality in these clothes. As a child he had a singular vision of himself and went for it. It was very personal, which is why I asked Charlotte Gainsbourg to represent the first new scent, Balenciaga Paris. After graduating from high school at age 18, Ghesquière turned down a place at art school to work as an assistant to designer Jean-Paul Gaultier from 1990 to 1992. Naturally, there will continue to be opinion leaders and forward-looking research, and things will have to level out, but for me it’s not a defining moment in fashion. Ein Gastbeitrag von Ildikó von Kürthy. For those close to Ghesquière it seemed like a violent end to a beautiful affair. Ghesquiere ha creato un gilet patchwork nella sua collezione primaverile che somigliava a quello disegnato da Wong nel 1973. NOTE: PS Note: Rare early piece by Ghesquière. Balenciaga is a national treasure, like Opéra de Paris or Notre Dame,” according to Hardy. Whether in Japan or China, in the U.S. of course, and in Europe, there is a cliché of the fashionista whose primary concern is achieving that girlie, stiletto look, never mind if it’s fashionable. Fanciful propositions, sketches, shreds of a historic Balenciaga fabric, a chair, or a vase may ignite an idea. I didn’t understand whom they were addressing, but for them, Balenciaga was formal. What looks, at a distance, as if it might be gray-blue denim is actually vegetable-dyed leather. Moderate wear but overall, fairly good condition. It’s fantastic to harvest that status to explore in new ways, rather then sticking to a routine, even if it was the most comfortable and incredible, I couldn’t be in a better position. It’s an unexpected encounter between something commonly understood as low-end and what’s considered luxury. Text by PIERRE-ALEXANDRE DE LOOZ, Portraits KARIM SADLI, Fashion MARIE-AMÉLIE SAUVÉ. Nicolas Ghesquière nasce il 9 maggio del 1971 a Comines, una piccola... Nicolas Ghesquière e la rinascita di Balenciaga. Of course – with almost every season they open doors to new possibilities. When I am drawing a garment, pursuing an idea, I am thinking of no one in particular at first – I might veer off in more extreme directions; but what often brings me back to reality are images of women around me or people I might imagine wearing the clothes. It’s more interesting to veil than to flaunt, to evoke the body than to mold it. It’s a bit of a cultural shock. Do the H&M’s and the Zara’s of the world scare you? “I remember seeing a runway picture of it for the first time and after that, everything I saw was measured up to the emotional reaction that the scuba top sparked for me,” she says. It’s important for Nicolas that the girls look like themselves.”. Balenciaga really corresponded to abstract art, to architecture, and a form of intellectual fashion, austerity mixed with a graphic quality. They found a very lovely space on Madison Avenue. It’s all very encouraging for someone just getting started. I wanted to maintain its shell and architecture, but also lighten it by removing any interior armature. Within the first three years the “major curiosity” at Balenciaga became an unquestionable “bright star.” Not simply the toast of the tastemakers, journalists dubbed Ghesquière a generational hallmark, nothing short of a “messiah.” By 2006, Time magazine included him in their list of 100 most influential people, remarking, “he knows what you are going to wear before you do.” Clear-sighted if not clairvoyant, Ghesquière kept stocking the love, collection after collection.