End of an Era: Demna’s Last Coup at Balenciaga Couture

In Paris this summer, Demna staged a finale that felt more like a personal reckoning than a fashion show. His 54th couture collection—his final one for Balenciaga—was less spectacle and more study: a slanted, quiet excavation of what haute couture means today.

The livestream began unusually, focusing first on the front row—guests framed as participants rather than passive viewers. They weren’t just witnessing; they became part of the narrative. As each name was spoken out loud in the soundtrack, it registered less as credit and more as acknowledgment—a declaration that everyone present had shaped the moment.

Casting that mixed supermodels, regular collaborators, and intentionally unpolished faces extended Demna’s long-running desire to blur the boundaries between the aspirational and the ordinary. For this finale, it landed heavy: couture became inclusive, purposeful, unpredictable.

The clothing itself reflected this shift. Each piece was impeccably handcrafted—no stretch or easy off-the-rack cuts—maintaining couture’s precision, even in exaggerated volumes. There was a clear nod to Cristóbal Balenciaga—structural shoulders and pristine tailoring—but reimagined through Demna’s avant-garde lens.

And then there was the bride: Eliza Douglas, Demna’s creative muse, closed the show in a gown that felt paradoxically familiar and alien. Her presence was a living manifesto, the human anchor of a collection both cerebral and visceral.

This wasn’t a goodbye staged for headlines. It was a final, deliberate act—a demonstration of Demna’s defining legacy: couture that lives in tension, between craft and culture, ease and excess. As Kering primes the house for calmer aesthetics, Demna insisted on complexity.

Across screen and salon, it felt like a passing of the torch—and the promise that the future of luxury can still surprise.