Reflecting on Demna’s Balenciaga | PLUS Vogue Editors on Anna Wintour's News

0:05This is The Run Through. I'm Chloe Mel. And I'm Cheminardi. Today we are looking back at Demna's decade at Balenciaga. I like the sound of that. Ahead of his final show for the house, which will be next week at the Couture Shows in Paris. Demna is obviously a powerhouse in our industry and has shaped pop culture and fashion in so many ways. Our co-host Nicole Phelps, as well as our fabulous Vogue colleagues Laya Garcia-Furtado and Sarah Mower, break it all down in their conversation on Demna's legacy coming right up. It's a really fun conversation. And those three women are so incisive and smart about the intersection of fashion and culture.

0:50And Demna really sort of embodies that to me. So I was very excited to hear the three of them parsing that through. Yeah, I can't wait to hear that conversation. Choma, tell me where you are right now. You're wearing a wonderful shirt with Bob Marley, but you're in a very pristine, white, hotel-looking room. Yeah, I'm at this very famous health resort, which is set on a lake. And you know how obsessed I am with all things well-being, wellness, longevity. And this place is just the best if you have anything, if you want to reset your gut specifically. You love a gut reset. Girl, I've had problems with my gut.

1:35When you have gut problems, you get quite obsessed with having a good gut. A good gut is hard to find. And it's amazing here. A good gut is hard to find, and they're getting to the root of the problem. Wow, this is exciting. Yeah, I mean, don't get to eat very much. That's not exciting for me. No, I know. The food is really good. It's just quite small. And there's various teas and elixirs and lots of treatments. I just came from the osteopath, which was great. So I feel very loose and relaxed. Oh, we love a relaxed show. Let me tell you, the vibe at One World Trade, not so loose and relaxed. Right.

2:20I mean, talk about burying the lead. I think we have to talk about the big news that broke last week. Everyone, including the osteopath here, was asking me about it. Yes. So our boss, Anna Wintour, announced that she's stepping down from her role as editor-in-chief of American Vogue after, wow, I can't believe it's been 37 years. Yeah, like her first issue ran in September 1988. So it's been a while. She'll basically, before we all say that she's retired, she hasn't because this is, I think there's like some misinformation going around. She will continue as chief content officer for Condé Nast and Vogue's global editorial director.

3:00So she technically isn't going anywhere. She's not going anywhere. And as she said when she announced it to senior staff on Thursday morning, I will still be in my office and my Claris Cliff pottery will remain in my office. So if you have any questions, I'll be right here. I do think that Anna will continue to be extremely present. and it will be interesting to see what this role looks like and how it is shaped and everyone is very curious. Conde Conclave, we're waiting for the white smoke. And you know what? Stanley Tucci, very pivotal character in both Conclave and D 'Avors Prada. Yeah. Well, I mean, there's going to be a global worldwide search, so I don't think there's going to be an announcement anytime soon.

3:48I think they're not going to rush this. I don't think this decision will be rushed and they're going to meet with a lot of people. Also important to note that this, the person coming into this role will have the title head of editorial content, not editor in chief, which is similar to your title, Choma, and other heads of editorial content at the other owned and operated editions of Vogue internationally. professionally. So this is really it's a new role. It's a different role. And as is true of every job and occupation, whoever comes in will make this what makes sense for them. And I think Anna will continue to shape what that is for her and what her role is.

4:34Well, I mean, I have to say, speaking of big news that we didn't talk about last week, how did you keep that under your hat? the big Lauren Sanchez cover. The Pentagon Papers were nothing compared to this. I had no idea. You got this really... So tell me everything from when you went to Milan. The story was amazing. So Anna Wintour loves a wedding. And Anna is very good at negotiating wedding exclusives with high-profile brides. She'd been talking to Lauren and Jeff about their wedding plans for a while. I think that she, Lauren, showed her some sketches of the dress. And Anna really negotiated this exclusive where we got to photograph Lauren in her wedding looks from Dolce & Gabbana two weeks before, three weeks before the wedding outside of Milan.

5:30We were going to do it at the Dolce & Gabbana atelier, but they have so much paparazzi following them. And so for security and privacy, we had to move it to this farmhouse 40 minutes outside of Milan, which resulted in extremely funny moments of trying to protect this very top secret nature of this shoot, including the poor, extremely aristocratic elderly owners of the villa we were renting taking like a wobbly iPhone photo and all the Italian producers jumping on them to delete it from their phones. not to mention a poor Italian corn farmer tootling by on his scooter and everyone being like, he's wearing a GoPro, get him.

6:15So it was really a lively and fun shoot. Tierney Guerin, who's a complete hoot and a delight. I was going to say, I love Tierney. I've never met her, but I love her work and I've always wanted to meet her. She also used to shoot for the Fader when I worked there. So I'm very, I love her work. I did not know her either. And now we are besties because we went to the best children's pajama store in Milan the next day and had so much fun. She bought the whole store. And so we love Tyranny. Tabitha Simmons, who loves Lauren and worked on the first Vogue Lauren Sanchez shoot. So it was a really good group of people.

6:57And it's just fun to be with a blushing bride before the wedding, no matter how much controversy is surrounding their wedding plans. Yeah, she definitely looks super happy. Yeah. Choma, tell me about the menswear shows and the Jonathan Anderson debut at Dior. Yeah, it's been quite an eventful week. Obviously, everybody was anticipating Jonathan's debut at Dior. He's the first designer to do both men's and women's. And this was his first outing for Dior. And what he said after the show was that he wanted his, he's really focused on how the first five collections will create a visual language for Dior.

7:42And he'd been looking at the archives. But for me, actually, it harkened a little bit back to his early work because he was one of the first designers to really play with this, menswear designers to play with this idea of gender. And you had these voluminous shorts that were almost like mini ball skirts. So I thought it was really kind of a nod to some of that, these insane frock coats. I really love the mix. I love how he takes utility pieces and pieces that you recognize, like the cargo pan, and makes them completely unrecognizable and new and fresh. He has such a knack for that. I also love his sense of humor.

8:22I thought it was fun to see Rihanna carrying the Bram Stoker's Dracula bag. I think those bags will be really collectible. Oh, I love the book bags. The book bags are really a really fun idea. Oh, I don't know. I don't know. What about you? I think they're all great. They were all fantastic. I thought the Lady Chatterley's Lover one was pretty. Like a controversial book. That's right. Yeah, no. And I think it was cool to see. I think everybody was excited to see who would come in support of him. and obviously all of his guys were there. Josh O 'Connor, who's always been a big front row fixture.

9:07ASAP Rocky and Rihanna, who looked adorable and have been winning the men's shows. Rihanna was also seen front row with her son, which was so cute, at Rocky's show. I know, I love that. Yeah, it was very, very, very cute. So, I don't know. No, I think men's is really making a big, it felt like a big week for men's. It did. It felt like a critical mass of people were there and were posting from it. It was more, it channeled more event than in years past, which is always interesting to see. Yeah. And I think so many of the designers that we love had standout shows. when I think about Wales Bonner coming off the success of the Met and being honestly one of the central designers as part of the super fine exhibit, had an incredible show.

10:00The tailoring was amazing. This idea of brooches and embellishment, the show was called Jewel. So it was all about, I guess, extending beyond the idea of Jewel and heirloom. And those beautiful brooches that we saw at the Met, She translated them to a more kind of everyday context. And I love how she mixes that amazing tailoring with sportswear. And she had a collab with Y3. And then Willie Shavaria, whose collection, I think, left me with chills. It's just the right way to make a political statement, a commentary on what was happening with the ice raids in L.A. And it was really stunning. It was really, really stunning.

10:44Even not being there, you could feel the energy from afar, I think. Yes, agree. Oh, one show that wasn't a menswear show, but that made a lot of waves, I think, was Jacquemus. He showed at Versailles before, and this time he showed again at Versailles. The entire collection was dedicated to his family, and he looked through. He's from Provence. He often sort of mines his personal history for inspiration. and this season he was looking at pictures I guess going three generations back of his own family and they have a history of being farmers and usually you you associate Jacquemus with this very quite sort of slinky sexy silhouette but it was much more pulled back as far as it was much more of a sort of a subtle seduction it felt much more grown up it did it felt much more grown up I think he was quite emotional backstage.

11:36I think it had been. It was a new sort of level of sophistication for him. And so a lot of people were texting me about that show, including Maya Singer, who said exactly that. She said it was like, yeah, it was great. But tell me about Mark, because that just seemed to steal everyone's imagination in New York. The Mark show was interesting because he really has, since he brought back his shows post-COVID, kept to this very consistent motif of oversized, subverted proportions. And somehow, even though this is a consistent motif of his, he manages to make it surprising and exciting each time. And this was, you know, in his show notes, he described it as a sort of investigation of beauty and rethinking what beauty means and how things add together.

12:31And you saw some of the dresses had lumps and weird places and a bra was sort of sewn into the side of the rib cage of the dress. And I thought it was quite provocative. And it's interesting and fun to see the guests at his show wearing the pieces from the last collection, which are also quite caricature like in their shapes. and seeing people navigate that on sort of New York City streets was fun. Choma, what are you feeling about couture and what are your couture plans? Well, couture this season, I think, will be a little bit more quiet than usual, I think, because Dior will not be showing. We'll have to wait another season for Jonathan's couture debut, which I think everyone is really waiting for because we've never seen what he could do with Couture and I think this will be a really exciting moment for him.

13:31And then Chanel, we know that Mathieu will not show his debut until October, but Demna will be showing his last show for Balenciaga. So that's going to be something really special for sure. And a good partner for this podcast. A good partner for this podcast. and then Glenn Martins will be showing his debut for Margiela. So there's lots to look forward to. And Celine debut. Oh, yeah, I'll be going for Celine debut, but it's technically before Couture starts. So I'm excited to see Michael Ryder's first show for Celine. So I'll be going in on Sunday for that. Chama, tell me about Glastonbury. Wow.

14:14Well, where to begin? I still haven't broken my Glastonbury virginity, So I haven't been yet, which I'm really slightly sad about and kicking myself about because next year is a fallow year. So there's no Glastonbury. Wait, is that a thing? I didn't know about that. Oh, yeah. The fields have to regenerate. I mean, there were so many amazing moments at Glastonbury. I think everybody was talking about Dochi and Charlie XCX, who happened to be playing at the same time, which I think was probably a mistake given that there's so much overlap with their fans. I thought, don't she looked incredible. She was wearing this very short pleated Vivian Westwood skirt with a matching bra top that referenced, I think, one of the suits that maybe Naomi Campbell wore.

15:03I think it was the same plaid. Okay. And then Olivia Rodrigo was one of the headliners and she looked adorable. She's looking adorable again this week. She's at Wimbledon with her cute boyfriend. Oh, yeah. We love courtside style. Are you going to Wimbledon? Oh, girl. I wish. I wish. I'm here for the first week, and then the second week I won't be able to go. But I usually go every opportunity I can. It's so much fun. People get so dressed up. I mean, even just watching the people from afar, I saw Cate Blanchett went with her mother looking incredible. People really get dressed to go to Wimbledon.

15:38It's a completely different culture. We have also been saying that the players' outfits this year have been fun. Like Coco's kit is very cute. So we've had a lot of eyes on the athletes themselves. Busy week around here, but we are off for the holiday, 4th of July, starting Thursday afternoon. You doing anything fun? We're going to be in Connecticut. Artie is very into his swim lessons at the moment, so we're going to be working on his diving. he tends to just jump in the pool and belly flop so we're working on him not hurting himself okay oh my god well i hope hopefully i'll you'll be documenting some of this i love i love seeing i love seeing all of it

16:30and we'll be back in a moment with nicole's conversation with sarah moa

16:47You come to the New Yorker Radio Hour for conversations that go deeper with people you really want to hear from, whether it's Bruce Springsteen or Questlove or Olivia Rodrigo, Liz Cheney, or the godfather of artificial intelligence, Jeffrey Hinton, or some of my extraordinarily well-informed colleagues at The New Yorker. So join us every week on The New Yorker Radio Hour, wherever you listen to podcasts.

17:21Sarah and Laya, welcome to the podcast. Thank you for having me. Hi. We are here to talk about Demna, whose final couture show for Balenciaga is next Wednesday. Sarah you have been covering his rise since the Vetements days what are your personal thoughts about Demna's decade at Balenciaga well I mean I think he he's one of the designers who really did have a really big effect on the way people dressed whether it was um amplifying what was going on in the street literally magnifying it so much that it was so hugely outsized and and everything he did with, you know, those extraordinary ugly dad trainers and so on.

18:07You could see that he changed the way, not many designers get to change the way people dress. I also thought, I think, well, Nicole, you'll know this, all the shows that we went to that kind of really did document and channel the times like nothing else. He's been so brilliant at interpreting the times and playing tricks on us with lots of different mega surprises, I think, and using digital technology, which came up in that time. So there's what he designed in terms of clothing, and then there's how he showed. You interviewed him about his retrospective, which went up at the beginning of the men's shows in Paris.

18:54What was his mood like when he was reflecting on his decade at Balenciaga? He felt that it was closure for him. So he selected these 101 pieces, not chronologically, but to represent that decade. And I was surprised. He started to tell me what he's going to do at Gucci as well. I was happy to hear him talk about that iconic red puffer jacket off the shoulders with the rhinestone encrusted turtleneck and the leggings. And to me, 10 years later, that is still one of my all time favorite looks. So definitive. Maybe we should start at the beginning. Laia, take us back to 2015. Who was Demna before he got the Balenciaga appointment?

19:54Why did he get this big job? He was almost unknown, fairly unknown outside of the fashion circles? Yeah, he was basically unknown. He was doing Vetements, and I feel like there were only a handful of collections by the time that he was named, but they were already, like, everybody was talking about them. They were, and you can see the precursor of everything that he did at Balenciaga there, and even those Vetements collections, when you look at them today, they still look so new, which is interesting because of what Sarah was saying, how he changed the way people dressed. And I think that can be the thing where like, when you have a really big change and then everybody sort of starts looking like that, the clothes can sometimes lose their sort of shocking or brand new feeling.

20:46But those early Vatman collections, same as Bonsiega, they still are so powerful. They're still so electrifying. But yeah, so he was basically an unknown. I feel like it was very like the If You Know You Know shows that people were going to in Paris. I know that I was not at any of the shows, but I do know that there is famously one held in like a dark basement. The depot? Is it depot? It was a sex club, wasn't it? A sex club, yeah. Nicole, you were there. I was. On that sex club. I was, yes. And it was stinky down there near the bathrooms. But we loved it. But it was one of those shows where the clothes brushed your legs as they walked by really, really close up.

21:30And so, so powerful, I remember. And that was the first time I met Demna after that show. I interviewed him. And he, for us insiders who, you know, were paying really close attention to the runways, he was elusive, I think, at that point. And so, you know, there's a lot of curiosity about him. And I remember being struck, I think, by his confidence and his he had a very clear idea of what he wanted to do. Do you remember him in those days, Sarah? Oh, yes. I mean, he was not a baby. He hadn't come from nowhere because he'd worked for he'd been to the Anthrop Academy and he'd worked for Margiela.

22:11And then he worked for I think he worked for Mark at Louis Vuitton. And they'd started Vetements as a kind. he and his brother and other unnamed people they were called they called themselves a collective started started this collection sort of as a side gig didn't they um and vetement literally means clothes so they were they were going back to oh that's so interesting because that's what he's saying he's going to do now clothes clothes as clothes and also at that time um there was this huge shift in the center of gravity of fashion because, I mean, Demner comes from former USSR, comes from Georgia, that whole aesthetic which was coming from Eastern Europe, which was thought of as incredibly raw and yet really exciting.

23:01I still have the famous Vetements jeans that he pieced together from old Levi's. And it feels like that was a turning point. I mean, there's so many sort of markers of the ways that, as you say, he changed fashion. But that was definitely a turning point where you had high fashion embracing used clothes and turning them into luxury goods. And I remember this is going back to the style.com days. And it feels quite quaint because I remember being shocked that the jeans cost like over a thousand dollars, like four figure jeans. And now, yeah, like nobody baths an eye. I mean, it's ridiculous, but still fashion has become so, so astronomically expensive in the last 10 years.

23:50Yeah, you're bringing back, you're triggering so many memories because in one of those, the very first piece I bought from Vetements was one of the very, very early days. And same as you. This was a oversized black blazer, which was so good. I mean, I still got it. it's got a kind of swing effect to it so i think you know when you see what you're talking about which is the recuperated genes whatever and that kind of there is a street elegance there was always a street elegant side to demner which then he elevated but those two things run in run very much in parallel but i agree with you live because um when you actually look back at it uh so much has been normalized i think he was really the last designer uh like the last appointment that was actually shocking that people were like why because like balenciaga was still so i mean balenciaga is balenciaga um and he was so from the you know not from the street but like his his style is from the streets it was like t-shirts like my favorite vet mot look is still that like gray sweatpants that are like high-waisted with the asymmetrical top like it's even describing it as so simple but when you look at it you're like oh I want to be that person like it was so the opposite of what everyone expected Valenciaga to be and I mean it's something that he fought I guess basically the whole 10 years that he was there but I feel like that was the last time where we were like oh my god this is a crazy like um appointment and and yeah it's funny that that he did sort of still fought those same, not haters, but like he still fought those same sort of questions.

25:34And like the whole, his whole tenure was still like people being like, you can't have a Balenciaga this and you can't have a Balenciaga that. And sometimes I was that person. And sometimes I was like, no, no, this is good. But I feel like that's what's good, you know, when you can, like yesterday we were arguing about something else in the office. And Nicole was like, I love it when people disagree because it's, you know, it's good when you're making work that's making everybody just, you know, that makes you be in your feelings. So we should go back to Balenciaga pre-Demna. Paint a picture of what was going on there when he got this appointment.

26:11Well, Alexander Wang had just been there for a handful of seasons. And that was, it was, I think that was also shocking. There was also a shocking appointment for Balenciaga to name Alexander Wang, who was, you know, young, king of New York fashion at the time. But it was not I don't think it was deemed successful at the time. So it was not which I mean, it was very pretty, but it was not. Alex followed an incredible Nicola. Nicola, of course. Nicola Gaskier, that is. Nicola Gaskier. So, yeah, Nicolas Guesquieu basically, I mean, every collection that he did, was he there about 10? A little more than that, I think.

26:56Maybe because he was there in the late 90s. Yeah. But every collection that he did there was amazing from the beginning. And I always love that before that, Nicolas was doing funeral clothes in Japan, which is my favorite fact about it. But yes, so basically the stakes were high for this Balenciaga appointment because Nicola could basically do no wrong and did no wrong the whole time he was there. And then Alex Wang came on and it was a different vibe. A short tenure. It was a short tenure and a different vibe. So it was interesting thinking about that, too, and thinking about all the recent appointments that day sort of took another risk sort of in a real unknown instead of going for for somebody that could have felt maybe more more safe.

27:45But, yeah, Balenciaga was like they needed someone to come in and just make it make it what Demna did it. Sarah, can you remember back to that debut for fall 2016, the mood of the room and how the show made you feel? Well, I mean, the anticipation was that, you know, you could feel it in your every fiber. And actually, it was done, as I remember, in a quadrangle. It was very, there was no sort of production values to it. It was clean. and we just knew the minute that it started with a suit that Eliza Douglas had on which was very tailored in a very expert way, quite very sober and then it built up to, as you said, the Helly Hansen moment which was this red puffer which was worn off the shoulder or not just worn off the shoulder, cut off the shoulder and then this incredible turtleneck, ski turtleneck, I suppose, which was encrusted with crystals.

28:51I mean, that's when you just get that jolt of electricity. You could just feel that everybody was there. That really, really nailed it. And you were there, Nicole. What did you feel? I, you know, the excitement, as you say, it sort of pulses through the audience. You know, we're all crushed up together and you can feel everybody start leaning forward. And yeah, it doesn't happen very often in shows. And when it does, it makes it so exciting. And it did feel very much like he understood and he had studied the Cristobal Balenciaga archive. But then maybe he started moving away from that quite quickly, Demna.

29:39And there were touches here and there, But then it took until he relaunched Couture to see him really dive back into the Cristobal legacy. And the Couture was just epic for me, too. I just loved looking at those Couture images. I didn't get to see a lot of the Couture in person. So do you remember going to that first Couture show? Yes, because he had not so much redesigned as replicated the original couture salon, which is still there. I mean, as Balenciaga designed it with all kind of plasterwork in it. And I think, yes, I'm remembering now. It was only shown online as a lookbook, but it was paced out like an old-fashioned, very old-fashioned, old-school couture show in that I think everybody had a number and there was a voiceover.

30:39It was kind of between that. It was very silent, especially the tailoring, the men's tailoring and women's tailoring, which is absolutely superb. That's what I related to. it became in some ways a parody in later seasons because I mean that's what Demner was always doing he he you could never quite tell whether he was just having a joke at our expense or or whatever it definitely got him you know all the internet and social media hits in the world I don't know what you think of that like that kind of line line he always treads actually between being quite serious and and thinking you thinking that she's having a joke on us Yeah, I think that was, I mean, I think that that frisson that like that tension is what makes it exciting because in a way, you know, he was really taking risks every season, whether they were risks in a good way or a bad way.

31:35Like, you know, I think a lot of the couture gowns were beautiful, but sometimes I would just see like a woman being barely able to move. And my second wave comes out and I'm like, what are we doing? You know, what are we highlighting here? But I think that that's also I feel like that was also part of of what he was trying to do. And it felt like he was really working through real life problems. Real life problems is in like modernity, like in every show and in every season. And that's why, you know, there would you could always find. Yeah. And I think that's where that tension came from, because he was like, as you said, like, yes, all designers are autobiographical to a degree.