Haute Couture, the supreme expression of craft, and ready-to-wear, the daily wardrobe, remain two reefs fed by one sea. In what he calls his most personal Balenciaga collection, Pierpaolo Piccioli lets the first grow into the second, until the currents of the atelier, its volumes and work of the flou reach everyday shirts, jeans, bomber and leather jackets.
To take over a House is to inherit and honour its chapters, from its roots, Cristóbal Balenciaga, “the master of us all” according to Christian Dior, until Demna. Here, the whole legacy is carried through under an eye and hand recognisable at first glance as Piccioli’s.
The collection opens in white with a shirt whose peplum is born of the stitching that shaped the corset of a green gown, without boning, in the 55th Couture collection. A second layer of cloth, densely worked across the lower third, draws in the waist above bias-cut jeans. Then the palette plunges into fuchsia, tangerine, acid yellow and cobalt blue, and the silhouettes swell in step. Drawstrings cinch the ankles of balloon cargo trousers, outerwear lifts its shoulders high and round, and a mini dress puffs out below a gathered waist.
The bias cut extends to unlined wool suits for women and men, while shirt backs finish unstructured suit jackets. Lace insertions from Calais and cutwork open onto the body as structure, a one-shoulder jersey dress weighs, Piccioli says, less than its hanger, and bags are draped by hand, twisted and knotted. Each garment keeps its identity while the hand leaves a human trace in it, the mark that makes it Balenciaga.
Everyday dressing meets the organic, in flowers, fringe and cascades. Over cream trousers, a dress is covered in clusters of orange organza flowers, filled with compressed air to answer the garment’s own line with a measured rhythm. A lace dress with a long fringe skirt meets combat boots, and a one-shoulder dress falls in strands. Around hems and necklines, structured decorations expand into oversized collars. Here, decoration builds the shape.
At the centre of the floor rises the collection’s namesake, Les Coraux de la Liberté, a column of branching coral in wrapped linen, magenta, orange and yellow, climbing to the ceiling. Dated 2025, it is the work of French artist Aude Franjou, who has sculpted with thread since 1999. It is a giant echo of the coral necklaces Piccioli wears every day, and the portrait of a couture House as a living ecosystem, grown slowly, polyp by polyp, shining only together.
