It takes a lot for the jaded fashion crowd to get excited about a celebrity. Even Kim Kardashian’s appearance at Maison Margiela with cropped hair that made her look like she was cosplaying her mother merely elicited amused grins. Ditto Ina Garten popping up at Hermès, to enjoy the parade of leather. But when Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, swept into the Balenciaga show on Saturday night, sheathed in a floor-length white shawl, every smartphone swiveled in her wake. (Nearby, Lauren Sánchez Bezos caused less of a kerfuffle.)
It was a sign of just how big a deal the show, the first from the house’s new creative director Pierpaolo Piccioli, was going to be. After all, the duchess knows something about starting new chapters and dressing the part. Even in a season of major debuts, this was one of the biggest.
Mr. Piccioli was taking over from Demna, the mononymic designer who during his decade at Balenciaga had effectively upended the luxury hierarchy, making the brand a change agent for how we dress and how we think about the world, extending its influence far beyond the perfumed reaches of high-end fashion. Where would it go now?
Back to first principles. Which is not the same thing as back to the past.
Though there were nods to the work of Demna in the bug-eye glasses worn by every model (more as a continuity gesture than one replete with aggressive, protective meaning, as they once had been), generally the haute streetwear that had recently defined Balenciaga was gone. Instead there were clothes that spoke to the lines and volumes of the brand’s founder, Cristóbal Balenciaga, who believed in the pure power of construction.
The opening look — a sleeveless black sack dress suspended from the shoulders with a gentle curve at the back, narrowing at the knees — set the tone. A crisp white shirt with a floor-length train topped slouchy black trousers. One “envelope” dress was composed of two fused squares of jersey, so the points met at the neck in a halter, with talon-like fabric feathers at the hem.
Every garment seemed calculated to create its own airspace, as if to allow for breathing room. Skinny black pants with skinnier B-buckle belts were worn under black leather capes cut to reveal the midriff at the front, or under squishy leather bombers with the sloping shoulders of a cocoon. There was an olive green zip-up jacket covered in 3-D spiky blooms and paired with faded denim culottes, and a bright violet bubble cocktail dress.
Elegant. Even impeccable. If not fashion shattering.
Mostly, it was full of stuff to wear, or to want to wear, including what may be the best version of the split skirt that inexplicably has turned into one of the trends of the season: a full bubble midi that turned out to be the Balenciaga take on Bermuda shorts.
In this, the collection was sort of a no-brainer, which sounds pejorative but actually means that it was easy to see how almost any piece from the runway could slide seamlessly into a wardrobe to make you feel — not cool, necessarily, but coolly in control. If the former queen of New York society Babe Paley found herself on the board of an A.I. firm, this is how she might dress. These aren’t clothes that show you the future. They free you up to get there.
Who can’t appreciate that, right about now?
Which is why it was so frustrating to see Pieter Mulier, the creative director of Alaïa, put a pair of what appeared to be strapless, armless, knickerbocker-length long johns on his runway. Imagine foot-binding, but for the torso.
Azzedine Alaïa, the brand’s founder, was, like Balenciaga, one of the great constructionists and feminists of fashion. And Mr. Mulier has, like Mr. Piccioli, generally taken that heritage to heart, though in a more sci-fi warrior princess kind of way.
This season that meant fantastically sculptural monastic tunics, trapeze coats with soaring collars and asymmetric skirts trimmed in oversize tassels. And the self-consciously avant-garde: thigh-high stockings with long fringe hanging from the top (fringe is ubiquitous on many runways) and split skirts anchored in a bow, like a shackle, at each ankle, but cut to the upper thigh at the side. A stirrup dress stretched down at each side to hook around the heel of the shoe, while sleeves had matching loops for the fingers, just to keep it all in place. Handy!
But then there were the long johns.
Maybe Mr. Mulier liked the streamlining of the silhouette. Maybe he felt it might make the wearer feel protected, as if she was eternally hugging herself. Maybe it was just trompe l’oeil, for a striking picture (a black turtleneck version of the look did have slits for the arms). But when there is even the suggestion that female agency should be sacrificed to designer self-indulgence, something has gone seriously wrong.
Vanessa Friedman has been the fashion director and chief fashion critic for The Times since 2014.
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