Let’s Invest in Imagination, Shall We?

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New ideas for clothes are in short supply. If there are fresh ideas or visionary proposals, they appear once on the runway and are rarely produced, gone to retire in an archive in order to make room for the commercial pieces that will wind up in stores. Most brands think they have to play it safe in order to reach as many customers as possible (especially now, with luxury goods so expensive), forcing creative directors to prioritize wearable, sellable ready-to-wear and accessories over their fashion-as-art dreams. But still, among all of the beautiful yet slightly one-note collections we’ve seen throughout the season, there are a few brilliant minds steadfastly holding onto creativity—and selling it well.

At Balenciaga, Demna left us all a voice note on the topic. It was accessed through a QR code on the fall 2024 run of show, and in it, he spoke about the importance of valuing creativity in this climate. His words were powerful: “What seems truly rare and infinite right now is actually creativity itself. I believe that creativity has secretly become a new form of luxury.”

On the runway, he delivered a collection that entered your brain and took up space. It started with an homage to the shapes and silhouettes of Cristobal Balenciaga but twerked into gowns that had shoulder pads sewn into the hips. Then, Demna took us on a journey through his personal design vernacular for Balenciaga, through every raw-cut hem and wonderfully wonky patchwork fabric and the label tags that were purposefully hung outside the collars and waists of the clothes. There were giant puffers and elegant but slightly off-beat dresses, hoodies and t-shirts with the eBay logo on them (Demna spent months handpicking trinkets from eBay to send to each guest as their show invitation), and trompe-l’oeil layering. In his collection notes, Demna denoted one hat as the “coolest beanie ever. Pulls down over the eyes to give an attitude, but it is still possible to see.”

The runway was entirely flanked by screens playing video footage that was being edited in real time. It went from nature settings to animation to moving cityscapes to mashups of TikTok videos and then a blurry gray fuzz. Demna’s message was about our overstimulation and the dangers of everything being “in your face,” as he said backstage after the show. “There’s the beauty of reality that we forget to notice because of the time we spend on our screens. It’s this overload of content,” he added.

It’s true, but even with the pulsating music, Kim Kardashian in the front row, and the barrage of visual stimulation during the show, nothing was more captivating then Demna’s designs. “Fashion has to be radical,” he said. “It has to be on the edge, otherwise it’s a scam and we’re trying to trap people to buy wallets.”

Demna’s approach to consumer culture is one of the most intelligent, and it’s not subtle. It leaves room for interpretation, allowing all of us to play around with fashion, to find our own definitions of good taste and bad taste. In that, Demna successfully bridges the gap between fashion and art, just as designers like Junya Watanabe, Rei Kawakubo, and Yohji Yamamoto have been doing for decades. This season, all three of these creative forces found escape rooted in authenticity and gave us profound jumping off points for self-expression. At Comme des Garcons, Kawakubo used details like exaggerated panniers and bows and stomping, looming model gestures to telegraph feminist-laced anger (and her own anger at the state of the world). Watanabe used shape and form to encase classic ready-to-wear and sweet floral prints and ask us to weigh the value of fashion and artfulness, while Yamamoto morphed bustles and tailcoats and plaids into deeply moving portraits of powerful garment construction.

Creativity shone through in ways that were less about shape and more about color and small details at Valentino, where Pierpaolo Piccioli stripped his fall collection of his now-signature bright hues and used a monochromatic black palette to do the talking. Actually, it was the tailoring and detailing that spoke volumes even in the midst of a plain hue. Piccioli continued the narrative of his last collection, which was all about women embracing shape and revealing their bodies on their own terms, in the most sophisticated and empowering ways. A simple long-sleeve dress turned distinctive with its hip cutouts and deep-V neckline. transparent lace with delicate embroideries didn’t feel precious or overly pretty; instead, it packed a big punch. In his focus on elements of design rather than color, Piccioli’s creativity shone through and lifted everything up—a strike of creative intention that still managed to (gasp!) result in very wearable clothes.

These designers all proved that there’s real value in presenting ideas over pushing product. This was evident too in all of the immensely talented emerging designers presenting throughout the week, like Ellen Hodakova Larsson of Hodakova, Caroline Hu, Róisín Pierce, and all of the nominees for this year’s LVMH Prize. Imagination and vision still exist in this industry, even if it is a business at the end of the day. We just have to keep reminding ourselves that creativity is out there and that it always, especially this week in Paris, deserves our undivided attention.

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