A sublime Pierpaolo Piccioli makes Balenciaga 'chic' again

Madrid – Just over 15 minutes. That was the duration of the presentation for Balenciaga's new collection. It was all the time Pierpaolo Piccioli needed to usher in a new chapter as the new creative director of the emblematic French fashion house of Spanish origin. This new era is marked by a return to the 'chic' refinement that made the master of Getaria, his name and his house, one of the greatest exponents of French Haute Couture.

A major highlight of the latest edition of Paris Fashion Week, Pierpaolo Piccioli made his debut as the new creative director of Balenciaga—one of the main fashion houses of the Kering group—this past Saturday, October 4. The Roman designer closed the sixth day of official presentations and shows of this new edition of Paris Fashion Week, presenting his first collection for the historic house for the spring/summer 2026 season. It was a collection with which the designer has once again demonstrated his great mastery and talent, perhaps more so than ever. He is debuting in a role for which he seems to have been preparing throughout his extensive and established professional career.

During his long years at the creative helm of Valentino, from 2008 to 2016 alongside Maria Grazia Chiuri and from 2016 to March 2024 alone, Pierpaolo Piccioli clearly showed the prominent place Cristóbal Balenciaga's work holds in his imagination. A perfect example is the Haute Couture collection for the autumn/winter 2023/2024 season. It featured clear and direct references to the work of the Spanish master of Haute Couture, such as Piccioli's reinterpretations of his balloon, rose, or 'robe queue de paon' (peacock tail) dresses. These reinterpretations of the Spaniard's work are as magnificent as they are constant throughout Piccioli's career. However, one cannot deny the often excessively literal references to Balenciaga's creations. This added to the interest surrounding the Roman designer's appointment as the new creative director of Balenciaga. The change raised questions about the extent to which the house was closing the vibrant and disruptive chapter under Demna's leadership. It also questioned how far Piccioli could push his ingenuity to move away from the literalness he has sometimes been guilty of, and create a truly new, attractive and evocative aesthetic universe for the brand.

This debut collection from the Italian for Balenciaga served as an answer to these two questions. It is fitting to use that term, as that is precisely what we witnessed at the Paris show this past Saturday, October 4. It was a historic day for the house, during which Piccioli laid the foundations for a new era for Balenciaga. The Italian approaches this new period not with the task of paying homage to its founder, and certainly not to Demna, but of carrying out a “recalibration” of its entire legacy, from its origins to its most recent present. The Roman designer embraces this extensive history to build a new chapter from the house's heritage. This chapter begins marked, firstly, by the working methodology that characterised Cristóbal Balenciaga as a couturier, which becomes the true cornerstone on which Piccioli will build this new era for the house. Secondly, it is marked by the recontextualisation and deconstruction of the Spanish couturier's work, based on Pierpaolo's own aesthetic sensibilities. From these two impulses, the Roman has begun to readjust the house's identity. He preserves a fiercely contemporary outlook on fashion tastes, a legacy from Demna—and also from Balenciaga himself, who was modern and daring in his glory days. He also reclaims the “chic” aesthetic that led Cristóbal Balenciaga to be crowned the great master of Haute Couture.

“Balenciaga is defined as a methodology”; as “creation understood as ideology, as identity, as an expression of humanity and invention,” the fashion house's management explained in a note. Taking this synthesis of the house's history as the cornerstone for this new era, “Pierpaolo Piccioli's debut collection as creative director of Balenciaga celebrates this essential component of the ‘maison’ and of the work of Cristóbal Balenciaga, bringing it into the present.” “Not as a homage, but as a recalibration,” emphasised the French fashion house of Spanish origin.

“We exist in feeling, in recognition, in the memory of what we have been and in the imagination of what we will be,” noted Pierpaolo himself, in a rather poetic manner, regarding his debut as creative director of Balenciaga. “What brought me here has been a journey full of emotions, which pushed me forward with force,” and which “not only taught me, but also revealed parts of myself I barely knew.” To shape this collection, he added, “I embraced the unpredictable, the endless days and working from the heart.” “Every heartbeat carries a name, a moment, a gesture,” and “this collection is born from that place of love and connection. It is as much mine as it is of everyone who experienced it with me, in every sense. Perhaps with a different pulse, but always with the same soul.” “This collection exists because we knew how to recognise, see and welcome each other,” he added, referring to the good synchronicity he had established with everyone in the Balenciaga atelier.

Reclaiming Cristóbal Balenciaga's 'chic' and modern heritage

Presented under the title 'The Heartbeat', this Balenciaga collection for the spring/summer 2026 season is the main focus. The first thing to note is how, honouring its name, the collection beats to the rhythm of the house's and its founder's heart. Cristóbal Balenciaga's presence is felt behind every silhouette, every cut and every thread on which this collection is based. His presence is felt like a fine veil that permeates everything, rather than a tangible materialisation of his work. The production is presented in a much more veiled than literal way, through a succession of garments for which Piccioli entrenches himself in the reclamation of Balenciaga's historical methodology, defining them by their fabrics and patterns.

Moving beyond these generalities, the collection reclaims jet black as Balenciaga's signature colour. It is fused and presented on this occasion as the anchor of a chromatic symphony completed with soft pale pinks and mint greens; deep chocolate browns; intense lilacs; forest greens and carmine reds; and elegant chartreuse yellows. With these colour tones, the Roman designer seems to recover the colour palette influenced by the great Spanish masters of painting, especially the work of Francisco de Zurbarán, which marked Balenciaga's work. Off-white is also a key colour in this collection. This presence seems to be a nod to the bridal production that also marked the history of the house. This is particularly evident in the off-white ensemble with a voluminous hemmed skirt, presented as a daring and attractive reinterpretation of the wedding dress Balenciaga designed for Queen Fabiola of Belgium.

Leaving the colour spectrum aside, in terms of cuts, patterns and silhouettes, one can only applaud the sublime work carried out by Piccioli in revisiting, reconstructing and recontextualising Balenciaga's work. This production is magnificently reconfigured within this collection, with the Roman designer's new versions of Balenciaga's historic trapeze, sack, balloon and 'peacock tail' dresses. He does not hesitate to subvert these patterns, giving way to new sack dresses that take on the identity of chemises; balloon dresses that take the form of leather jackets enveloping the body like shells; new updated and minimalist versions of the house's historic 'baby doll' dress; or 'peacock tail' dresses that are shortened to form new and attractive crop tops, or take on the identity of elegant poncho-tunics. It is also impossible not to highlight the cocktail dresses, as well as the evening gowns that closed the show, with which Piccioli made this return to Balenciaga's 'chic' more than evident. The same goes for the accessories, such as the wasp-eye glasses or the white pillbox-style hats, with which the Italian seems to make a direct nod to the style worn by Audrey Hepburn during the 1960s.

“In his creative practice, Balenciaga placed the human being at the centre,” noted the fashion house. “The aesthetic austerity—even severity—concealed a physical lightness,” with “garments conceived for a body in motion” in which, “between body and fabric,” “an essential exchange, a dynamic relationship” was fostered. Taking this heritage as its own, and following “in this line, the garments here explore the space between fabric and form,” presenting “air as a third dimension”; as “a vital element of their construction.” The result is a collection in which “fragments of the past are reinterpreted with an eye to the future”; a proposal in which “memories of Cristóbal Balenciaga's work awaken instinctive reactions” in the Roman designer. “More as an evocation than a tribute, the shadows of his architectural forms are projected onto the present,” through “bold and disruptive volumes applied to garments that define the contemporary wardrobe,” such as “leather jackets, chinos, T-shirts, knitwear and accessories”; to “a current vocabulary completely transformed through this approach,” imprinted by the hand of Piccioli.

New 'Neo Gazar' fabric

As we pointed out, Piccioli places the historical working methodology of the Balenciaga ateliers as the gravitational stone around which he will shape this new era for the house. Within this methodology, it is the cloth, the fabrics, that are discovered and presented as the starting and finishing point of this working process. Fabrics were what moved Cristóbal Balenciaga's hand when it came to shaping a design, and ultimately, they were what defined its very identity. Hence, it was essential for the Spanish couturier to devise a new fabric, gazar, to use as a tool to partially reverse the order of this process, arming himself with a raw material with which he could unleash all his creativity. This is a history, and again a legacy, of the house of Balenciaga, which Piccioli also assumes, and on which he begins to write an equally new chapter, presenting Balenciaga's new 'Neo Gazar' fabric.

According to the fashion house, the original fabric is a double-faced fabric made with two warps and two wefts. The first layer, of gauze, uses an irregular warp of slub yarns that naturally generates breaks and imperfections, creating a surface “with a lively and characteristic texture.” The second layer, of organza, is much softer and is made with a continuous silk warp, which provides “structure without rigidity.”

“In this new version, Pierpaolo Piccioli,” who, breaking with the house's historical tradition, did come out to greet the audience after the show, “decided to keep the visible gauze effect on the outside, but to enrich the organza layer with an additional ‘lamiset’ weft,” in a silk and wool blend. “This extra thread,” noted Balenciaga, “softens the typical rigidity of organza, making the ‘neo gazar’ less stiff and more adaptable to tailoring,” but “while maintaining its distinctive qualities of volume and lightness.” This characteristic of the fabric underpins the foundations of this new era for Balenciaga, in which the construction of the designs will once again be an “essential” value.

As is the case in this debut collection, its “sculptural silhouette is born not from internal structures, but from the cut of the material itself, from the intentionality of fabric, colour and form as a unique gesture of determination.” “Transformation arises from cut and proportion,” summarised Balenciaga, in relation to a proposal in which “knitwear reinterprets archival fabrics with new materialities”; and in which “the house's iconic gazar is reinvented,” while “flower embroideries and feathers intertwined with the fabric itself become an architectural rather than decorative proposal,” in “another means of redefining the body from the purity of the cut.”