Balenciaga Spring 2025 Rains Down on Shanghai
Balenciaga's Spring 2025 show in Shanghai on May 30th came with one order of dim sum and a whole lot of rain.
No seriously, the invite for Balenciaga's first presentation in Shanghai arrived inside a bamboo steamer basket and was shaped like a delicious piece of xiao long bao, aka a soup dumpling.
There were even some win-win cakes stamped with a Balenciaga's double-B logo.
The invite made sense considering that soup dumplings originated in the Nan Xiang County of Shanghai.
Balenciaga even collaborated with the revered Shanghainese institution, Nu Xiang Mu Dou in Shanhgai, to actually make real soup dumplings as apart of its pre-show festivities.
Enough talk about the food though! I'm starving to see what this new Balenciaga is about.
While it sucks in any other scenario to be caught in a downpour during an outdoor runway show, it's literally the most on-brand weather for a Balenciaga affair. Seriously, the receipts are there. Wacky weather means Demna cooked. Just look at Balenciaga's Winter 2022 presentation set inside a snow globe or the flooded catwalk of its Fall 2020 show if you need the receipts.
As usual for Balenciaga, many ready-to-wear looks played with oversized proportions and thoughtful discordance.
Demna sent down super elongated silhouettes inspired by Shanghai's skyrises, a design choice that made every model look cartoonishly tall especially when they were wearing those impressively beefy platform running sneakers.
One standout look to note was a pink dress constructed from strips of disposable pink plastic bags that were over a decade old.
That look is a direct reference to a pink Fall/Winter 1965 evening dress by Cristobel Balenciaga originally constructed with shaved ostrich feathers.
Ever since Demna began designing couture collections for Balenciaga, he's truly honed in on remastering old Cristobel looks for modern times. This piece, though it's technically ready-to-wear, isstill exceptional when considering the commentary it makes on the potential of upcycling within the luxury space, which is a classic Demna trope.
Now the only pieces currently available from this collection is a surprising collaboration between Balenciaga and Under Armour.
Eight pieces are currently available and range from $150 socks to $1,450 zip-up hoodies.
While this was the first apparel we saw from Balenciaga's Spring 2025 line, it's far from being the best pieces within its Spring 2025 collection.
And if I really wanted to zoom around in some Balenciaga, I'd rather pick-up that one hoodie on the catwalk that was clearly inspired by all those Affliction pieces Gen-Z kids on TikTok can't get enough of.
Looking at the crowd in Shanghai, though, they can't get enough of Balenciaga.
