With a curvy, hip-padded suit and an off-the-shoulder parka in Valentine red, Demna set fashion on a new course. His Balenciaga debut for fall 2016 was a master class in (ir)reverence, which concurrently paid tribute to the heritage of Cristóbal Balenciaga while loosening things up. Though the designer would come around to couture, he kept the street/salon dichotomy going over the course of his nearly 10-year tenure at the label, elevating denim to haute status, for example, and destroying the equivalency between hours of labor and value by proposing a 10-minutes-in-the-making dress.
Collected below are highlights from Demna’s career at Balenciaga. What were your favorites?