Regardless of Balenciaga’s official Instagram account completely rebelled against the traditional operation mode of luxury brand social media, and purely released photos and inspirational pictures of ordinary people rather than brand content, Balenciaga’s recently opened Tiktok account also released a number of “nonsense” creative videos that seemed unrelated to the product, showing the brand core to Chinese consumers, although this was not easy to detect.
Some argue that Demna Gvasalia has completely betrayed the legacy of the high-end fashion house established during the Cristobal Balenciaga era. However, after experiencing the initial years of controversy, when we re-examine Demna Gvasalia’s works, we will find that in the process of transitioning from personal brand Vetments to Balenciaga, Demna Gvasalia not only continues its nostalgic style for everyday things and history, but also inherits the focus on silhouettes from the Cristobal Balenciaga era, bringing the brand recognizable exaggerated silhouettes such as towering shoulders.
In the current era of popular street trends, Demna Gvasalia has persisted in exploring a certain professional dimension and made her own achievements, which is a fact that many critics often overlook.
From fashion to brand visual communication, Balenciaga has established a brand new worldview. What Demna Gvasalia has done is not only nostalgia as always, but also imagination for the future. Starting from the previous season, Balenciaga has focused on creating an apocalyptic emotion that is both hopeless and romantic, blurring the timeline. The 2020 autumn/winter series will decorate the runway as a post apocalyptic world with low sky, amidst fire and water, and an abnormal climate. The advertisements in the 2020 Spring/Summer series are postmodern style news broadcasts filled with absurd visuals, cleverly echoing the global turmoil since 2020.
Since 2017, when luxury brands introduced the sale of Qixi series online and launched a digital competition across the industry, the competition has become increasingly fierce. It is not only about products, but also a series of social media marketing activities.
Festival marketing is naturally understandable, after all, it is not a brand’s wishful thinking, but the market environment is determined by the habits of Chinese consumers shopping during festivals. Especially after the epidemic, the pressure on the global market has shifted towards the Chinese market, and the loss of abandoning any holiday node is incalculable for brands. Looking at the recent frenzy of luxury shopping malls and the surge in online sales, it is evident that the desire of Chinese consumers for luxury goods is the starting point of all market behavior.
Clarifying this background will help to understand Balenciaga’s recent series of Qixi controversies.
