Balenciaga Bids Demna Farewell With A Couture Finale

Demna closes a decade at Balenciaga with a couture lineup that pares house heritage down to silk bombers, tufted “corduroy” and a lace gown sculpted like porcelain.

Balenciaga Couture 2025
Balenciaga Couture 2025

Balenciaga’s couture salon at 10 Avenue George V hosted the Balenciaga Couture 2025 collection this afternoon, Demna’s final show for the house. The line-up balanced monumental structure with surprising lightness, distilling his decade-long effort to recast Cristóbal Balenciaga’s signatures for the present day.

“These looks are the perfect way for me to finish my decade at Balenciaga,” Demna said in prepared remarks released with the show. “I have come as close as possible to being satisfied in this endless pursuit of impossible perfection—the defining ethos of Cristóbal Balenciaga. The looks are photographed throughout Paris—a tribute to the place where I began my fashion career.”

Balenciaga Couture 2025
Balenciaga Couture 2025
Balenciaga Couture 2025
Balenciaga Couture 2025
Balenciaga Couture 2025
Balenciaga Couture 2025
Balenciaga Couture 2025
Balenciaga Couture 2025

Demna began with a rethink of la bourgeoisie, twisting its dress codes into sharply sculpted jackets with tulip-shaped lapels that framed the face and high collars recalling Medici portraits. Hourglass shapes appeared everywhere, yet each used re-engineered “comfortable” corsetry so the waist looked cinched while the wearer could still breathe.

The show then unfolded like a personal wardrobe rendered at couture altitude. A technical-silk bomber was as light as a shadow; a summer-weight taffeta blouson replaced the usual boardroom blazer; an almost weightless car coat glided past. “Corduroy” trousers turned out to be 300 kilometres of tufted embroidery—Demna’s trompe-l’œil joke on everyday fabric.

Balenciaga Couture 2025
Balenciaga Couture 2025
Balenciaga Couture 2025
Balenciaga Couture 2025
Balenciaga Couture 2025
Balenciaga Couture 2025
Balenciaga Couture 2025
Balenciaga Couture 2025

Cristóbal’s presence surfaced in quieter notes. The “Danielle” suit, lifted from a 1967 houndstooth ensemble, carried the founder’s upright stance. A 1957 floral print re-emerged on a sequinned skirt suit and matching handbag, a gesture Demna linked to his grandmother’s kitchen tablecloth, proving sentiment can live comfortably inside strict tailoring.

Old Hollywood, another of the designer’s preoccupations, took the stage next. A black sequinned “Diva” column nodded to Marilyn Monroe; a whisper-pink “Debutante” dress in near-weightless organza swirled like spun sugar. Kim appeared in a feather-embroidered “mink” coat over a silk slip that echoed Elizabeth Taylor in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, her ears sparkling with the actor’s diamond pendant earrings on loan from Lorraine Schwartz.

Nine suits, developed with four Neapolitan ateliers, challenged the idea that tailoring dictates the body. Each was cut on a bodybuilder, then shown on markedly different physiques, underlining Demna’s point that the garment should adapt to the wearer, not the other way around. Accessories kept pace: briefcases were refashioned into jewellery-box laptop cases, flower brooches came from atelier off-cuts, and the house’s first couture sneaker was handcrafted using traditional shoemaking methods.

Balenciaga Couture 2025
Balenciaga Couture 2025
Balenciaga Couture 2025
Balenciaga Couture 2025
Balenciaga Couture 2025
Balenciaga Couture 2025
Balenciaga Couture 2025
Balenciaga Couture 2025

The climax belonged to Eliza in a seamless guipure-lace gown shaped with millinery techniques—one continuous surface with no visible joins, everything held by hidden structure. It was the purest expression of Demna’s fixation on sculpture you can wear.

After the final look, a recording of team members reading their own names filled the salon before Sade’s “No Ordinary Love” drifted in. Even the handbags replaced the Balenciaga logo with each model’s name, turning branding into acknowledgement. The gesture summed up the show’s mood: part thank-you note, part self-portrait.

Demna leaves the house much as he found it, rooted in line, volume and nerve, yet newly tuned to ease. His goodbye relied on cut, memory and the conviction that couture can speak softly and still hit hard, the way a closing scene can linger long after the lights come up.

Balenciaga Couture 2025
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Balenciaga Demna