SUB-BS20

The scenography for the Balenciaga Summer 2020 collection comprised 500 seats assembled into an elliptical double spiral inside Studio 5 at La Cité du Cinéma in Paris. All surfaces were monochrome, saturated in a European Union hue of blue, from the wall-to-wall carpeting to the floor-to-ceiling velvet curtains that circumscribed the space. The design approximated a parliament, acting as a spatial extension of Balenciaga’s investigations into “power dressing,” or the relationship between fashion and social status. “Fashion is to the body what architecture is to space: a technology of fabrication and social control, a device of framing and segmentation, of subjugation and production of political meaning,” wrote theorist Paul B. Preciado of the show for Libération on October 4, 2019. “The corridors of the imaginary parliament are catwalks in which the battle between norm and dissent, between control and emancipation, takes place.”