Balenciaga and the death of irony
Balenciaga was the talk of social media this week as images of the luxury brand’s latest release, the Paris sneaker, circulated. The campaign featured still-life images by photographer Leopold Duchemin of dirty, worn-out, beaten up, and ripped sneakers — an exaggerated version of the collection to go on sale: a range of six shoes featuring stylized wear and distress. The intended message is that the sneakers, starting at $495, “are meant to be worn for a lifetime”.
It’s a statement on our throw-away attitude towards fashion, and with the industry accounting for 92 million tonnes of waste in landfills every year, it’s a noble message. Unfortunately, though, Balenciaga’s message delivers the opposite result. Oh, and by the way, “a limited edition of 100 pairs of these extra destroyed sneakers will be available while supplies last.” Wouldn’t you know it, they’re nearly sold-out already? Hmm.
In adopting the distressed look, Balenciaga has not only dated the shoes from a trend perspective but also rather literally. Cotton canvas is durable in the short-term, but it’s vulnerable to moisture and offers little option by way of maintenance past gentle spot cleaning. Coupled with those tears, these sneakers are a product with more than half of their life cycle eliminated before they even make it to your closet.
Balenciaga offers a two-year warranty against factory defects but not for general wear-and-tear, that’s up to the customer. Though the brand does offer repair services, directions are vague and not easy to locate on the website. (As a sidenote, even the ubiquitous Converse Chuck Taylor Allstars, a sneaker which has maintained relevance since its debut in 1917, don’t guarantee a “lifetime” of wear.)
‘Homeless chic’
Of course, at the center is the very problematic desire to want to ‘look poor’ without having to experience the real challenges of homelessness. Capitalizing on the vagrant aesthetic is nothing new. Christian Lacroix once said: “It’s terrible to say, very often the most exciting outfits are from the poorest people.” Terrible to say, indeed, but not a sentiment exclusive to Lacriox.
For spring-summer 2000, Dior’s John Galliano debuted an haute couture collection inspired by Paris’ homeless population. Models were styled looking disheveled, “some swathed in newspapers, with torn linings and inside-out labels, accessorized with empty little green J&B whiskey bottles, tin cups dangling from the derriere, bottle caps, plastic clothespins and safety pins,” observed the New York Times’ columnist Maureen Dowd at the time. The show wasn’t well-received, and after initial resistance to criticism, Galliano conceded he’d made “a spectacle of misery”. The show, and the designer, would go on to serve as direct inspiration for fictional designer Jacobim Mugatu’s ‘Derelict’ collection in the comedy film Zoolander, with Will Farrell starring as the shouty caricature of Galliano.
In 2010, Vivienne Westwood’s runway featured models with smudged, dirty faces, frostbitten beards, and incorporated motifs typically associated with homelessness, like cardboard boxes, shopping trolleys, and bedrolls. At best, it leaves a bad taste in your mouth, at worst, it’s deeply offensive societal appropriation. Balenciaga’s latest iteration of the ‘worn-out’ aesthetic feels exactly that: tired and uninspiring.
A consumerist antidote to consumerism
The irony is that it costs a lot of money — in Balenciaga’s case, $1,850 for the “extra destroyed limited edition” — to look poor. Is the brand trying to subvert consumerism with satire? Unlikely. It’s hard to make a case for your garment’s timelessness and longevity when you’re selling a gimmick. And it’s been done. Divisive brand Vetements would charge consumers $250 in 2016 to look like a DHL delivery driver, when the reality of such a profession brings in around $48,000 and the average American household spends $61,334 a year on expenses. Go figure.
What would’ve made Balenciaga’s shoes kind of interesting is if the brand had used fabric sourced from landfill or upcycled discarded sneakers, but there’s no mention of that anywhere in the press material. The mission to promote lifelong wearability feels completely disingenuous coming from a luxury fashion house that makes no apologies for riding trend waves. What could have been an admirable conversation about wastefulness is ultimately a missed opportunity. In this instance, it seems the irony is lost on even them.
