Collaboration with HBO hit is gen Z mashup of glossy blacks and harsh neons, while Celine gives preppy added ‘bite’
T
he anxiety-spiked, drug-fuelled, hyperstylised technicolour online messiness of generation Z was not on anyone’s bingo card for Balenciaga’s Paris fashion week show. Cristóbal Balenciaga dressed Ingrid Bergman and Jackie Kennedy; its current designer, Pierpaolo Piccioli, is revered as one fashion’s great romantics, the master of colour and poetry on the modern red carpet.
The Balenciaga show was a collaboration with Euphoria, HBO’s divisive teen drama. In a dark, cavernous venue on the Avenue des Champs-Élysées, the lights were low, the music (Rosalía, Labrinth) was loud. On flickering video screens, harlequinade images of nocturnal cityscapes segued into preview images from the long-awaited third series of Euphoria, which returns in April. A sweater was printed with a screen still of new cast member Danielle Deadwyler, smoking a cigarette in a low-cut blood-red top.
Backstage afterwards, Picciolo said he had collaborated with his friend Sam Levinson, Euphoria’s showrunner, because he wanted “to take a picture of this generation. What I love about his show is that he doesn’t criticise, or celebrate, or judge. He shows us the humanity of the characters.”
