neoprene princess

"Retro futuristic", called WWD the last array of creations from Nicolas Ghesquière for Balenciaga. A paradox that starts making sense when scratching the surface of the Balenciaga archive. For FW10, Ghesquière has in fact made futurism his centre of inspiration but in a way that never ceases to look back, or rather, to make a connection with his previous collections. And this is one of the aspects that I have always loved about him —there is a consistent sense of continuity in all things Balenciaga.

Sci-fi, high-tech and primary colours are essentials to Ghesquière's winter. Editors seemed to be somewhat disconcerted about this. Cathy Horyn wrote "Although the silhouette was essentially a quare on stilts [...] the materials, and the shapes within shapes, were hard to identify". It was, quite simply, a successfully experimental collection that proved that Ghesquière is the visionaire we have always thought him to be.

The accessories didn't escape this experimentation. In the case of the shoes, it seemed as if a civilisation far in the future had found the rests of a current pair of heels and tried to reconstruct it in their way. The shoes mixed with mastery the old and the new, the traditional and the unorthodox, the bold and the coy.

[Pictures: style.com]

I might have spoken too much too soon but this might just be one of the best collections yet, if not altogether. Unless Stefano, Alber or Riccardo prove me wrong.

I'm off.