Justin Bieber’s lazy loungewear look that actually costs more than £3,000
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We’ve all been there. Checking in for a 6am budget flight, only to find out that your carry-on bag is too heavy, and you’ll have to pay a fee for it to go in the hold – unless you can find a way to lighten it. The solution? Start layering on as many articles of clothing as possible, until your suitcase reaches the desired weight.
That’s what appears to have happened to poor Justin Bieber on Wednesday, when he was spotted in Los Angeles wearing what looks like two pairs of (purposefully) ill-fitting Balenciaga tracksuit bottoms (around £850 apiece), a hoodie, a New Era baseball cap and Louis Vuitton’s new answer to Ugg boots, called the LV Footprint (£1,880). All he was missing was a neck pillow (may I suggest Phoebe Philo’s £1,400 version to complete the economy-class chic aesthetic?).
The flaw in this theory? Bieber’s unlikely to have travelled on a budget airline in his life, or at least, not since his pre-fame early teens. The 30-year-old pop star has an estimated net worth of £229 million; he can travel by private jet.
What is more likely is that Bieber is fulfilling contractual obligations by stepping out in this bizarre getup. He’s one of the faces of Balenciaga, along with Kim Kardashian, Isabelle Huppert and Nicole Kidman.
Bieber holds a unique position in this roster, in that he appeals to the sneakerheads who live for the much-hyped £1,000 “dad” trainers and stunt fashion at which Balenciaga’s mononymous creative director Demna excels. He doesn’t mind looking silly to the mainstream; like a rebellious teenager, he probably enjoys winding everybody up.
So does Demna. While he has a strong handle on the house codes established by couturier Cristóbal Balenciaga, he also likes to be provocative. At his last Paris Fashion Week show in March, the dresses were patchworks of bits of nylon rucksack, bras and nightdresses, and appeared to be sellotaped together.
“Some of the questions I’ve been thinking about recently are: what is luxury? What is fashion and why does it even matter?” Demna said in a voice message sent to guests before the show. “Luxury is, by definition, a sort of scarcity, something that is not infinitely available; what seems to be truly finite and rare right now is actually creativity itself. I believe that creativity has secretly become a new sort of luxury.”
Demna has also made headlines for his £695 towel skirt, a £1,350 glossy black “trash bag” and high-heeled Crocs. In 2018, he designed a multi-layered coat akin to one in a scene from Friends where Joey wears all of Chandler’s clothes. In 2022, shortly after the outbreak of war in Ukraine, he staged a Paris Fashion Week show in a “mud grave”.
Many will remember how the house pushed the envelope too far in November 2022, when it ran an advertising campaign which featured children holding teddy bears in bondage harnesses and a later iteration which appeared to condone child pornography. For Demna, it’s been a slow road to recovery.
Back to Bieber and his double sweatpants, though, which still raise more questions than answers: why would you wear two pairs of joggers at once? How is that gravity-defying outer pair staying up? Will teens and 20-somethings follow suit? Will “slob-core” catch on?
Or perhaps Bieber’s reasoning is as simple as: why wear one pair of designer joggers when you can wear two?
