BALENCIAGA’S LATEST FASHION SHOW TURNS THE STOCK MARKET INTO SOCIAL COMMENTARY

09 jun 2022, for frame

Location

Brand

As Balenciaga’s first-ever runway show outside of Paris and the first show to take to the New York Stock Exchange, the brand harnessed the iconic significance of the space to form a critical narrative.

Key features

Glitchy stock market screens were the background of the Balenciaga Spring 2023 show, which took place at the New York Stock Exchange on Wall Street. In place of the usual financial information, the screens displayed ‘infotainment’ content, created by SUB and Niklas Bildstein Zaar, a fabricated element contrasted by the actuality of the show’s location at the major financial hub. For stock traders, screens play a fundamental role in making trading decisions. Many screens carefully laid out in a circular configuration displayed valuable information in real time like summaries of intraday market action. Spectators sat with their backs to the screens of those carefully designed workstations. The catwalk snaked through the narrow space between the trading workspaces, giving the impression of a gaming venue. Then, introduced by Adidas tracksuits, the imminent system crash ended the show.

Frame's take

After the fictitious market crash at the show, the release of a limited edition of the BalenciagaxAdidas collection online and at the Balenciaga Madison Avenue, Manhattan, flagship immediately followed. Reports from Balenciaga fan account @demnagram claim that internet searches for the term ‘tracksuit’ increased by 138 per cent after the show. By now, Demna has developed the reputation for mounting immersive fashion spectacles, virally shared and discussed online.

For the brand’s creative director, a fashion show is a touchpoint in ongoing, scrupulously designed storytelling that comments on the global social and geopolitical situation, including the state of technology and fashion itself. This time, using location scouting as the approach, Balenciaga told a story of a seven-year-old boy in an Adidas tracksuit from post-soviet Georgia who made it to Wall Street to fulfil his father’s dream of becoming a banker. The art director’s personal story in ‘the age of sharing’ turns Balenciaga fashion shows into a machine of generating shares, searches and democratizing fashion.