deux ou trois choses, 19 february 2023
Fashion month for the next fall season is currently in full swing, and the most interesting thing to come out of it up to this point is Demna’s interview in vogue.com. That includes New York fashion week in its entirety. This is the designer’s first interview since the whole Balenscandal, and weirdly, as other have noticed, the text has no author. The article is credited “by Vogue” and that’s it. Was the magazine afraid to expose one of its writers to the ire of QAnon? Or maybe this generalization was a strategy meant to maximize the drama, as in, ‘Demna VS Vogue’? It’s unclear, but in any case, we’re left dealing with these two abstract entities, as it’s also the first time the designer directly talks about his decision to drop his family name à la Madonna.
The pop icon's namedrop isn’t accidental: the most interesting part of the conversation touches upon the designer’s relationship with Pop Culture.
For me, the whole notion of pop culture is really…it is popular; it is appealing to many different types of people. And the branding part of pop culture was very beneficial to Balenciaga for its visibility, and consequently, obviously, for commercial success (…) Now, was it beneficial to be such a part of pop culture during this crisis? I certainly think not. Being part of pop culture brings virality to any subject, so the viral aspects of that subject can end up having a massive impact.
About a year and a half ago, while trying to assess why Demna’s first haute couture show for Balenciaga was an awe inspiring high from which the fashion house seemed to descend, I hesitated using that explicit word, virality, and chose shareability instead. I did, however, call their violent push for popularity populism.
⁂