Nicolas Ghesquière does Animal Prints for Balenciaga
Style.com

Anyone who knows me could tell you that ever since I've known of him Nicolas Ghesquière has been my favourite designer. There is something about the way he works with shape and materials that always keeps me interested. I don't ever remember being disappointed by him.

And he has done it again for FW12 but in a very different way than we're used to. His FW12 collection for Balenciaga is the most wearable we have seen from the house in seasons. The clean-cut coats, chiffon and lamé dresses and even separates such as trousers and bustier tops could go straight from the runway to the shop racks.

I was pleasantly surprised to see so many animal prints on the new collection –leopard and tiger–, which felt really refreshing and modern. I loved the asymmetrical evening dresses the most but was also very keen on the cowl-collared jackets and the kimono-inspired coats (we have seen a lot of Japanese influences this season). They were mostly quite traditional but Ghesquière also played with them in his very well known graphic, more abstract way.

The animal theme continued with one or two fur outerwear pieces and the crocodile parts used on the (amazing!) shoes and bags. 

The First and the City turn 10

It barely took a couple of years for Balenciaga's First bag to become all the rage in and out of Hollywood and now we celebrate its birthday. The bag, its older sister (the City) and the ballerinas from the motorcycle collection are turning 10 and to celebrate it Nicolas Ghesquière has created a special edition of each of them. The metallic black, brown and pink editions are part of Balenciaga's partnership with Neiman Marcus, where they are sold exclusively. The leopard print models are, too, already on sale online and will probably hit the stores soon but they most definitely won't last long. All limited editions include patterned lining to differentiate them from the classic black one. Neiman Marcus' bags also include a commemorative tag to remind you every day of how special your bag is.

If you want to start saving, here are the prices for each model. Personally, the black and the leopard City are worth every penny. Leopard First $1025, Leopard City $1125, Craquele First $1195, Craquele City $1395, Craquele flats $495.

Click here to go to Neiman Marcus and here for Balenciaga's website.

I'm off.

[Pictures: Balenciaga.com, NeimanMarcus.com]

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.