Artists want to work with Balenciaga, buy it, and think about it. How did a fashion house become an art-world power broker?
"Carly Busta, an aggregating Truman Capote for the Berlin scene who runs New Models, a kind of Drudge Report for the art world, said in an interview earlier this fall that Balenciaga pulls its talent from a creative class, often Berlin-based, that has more crossover with the art world than the fashion world. “You go to a Buchholz party”—the cerebral, blue-chip German gallery—“and it’s the same people who are walking in the Balenciaga show.” In other words: “There’s so much crossover that it feels like the art world and Balenciaga are a part of the same conversation.”
"But Balenciaga, artists and arbiters say, approaches fashion more like the art world approaches its own craft. “Luxury is really embarrassing,” Busta said. The idea of artists—many of whom take as their subject the dislocating qualities of late capitalism—wearing an earnestly luxurious brand seems ridiculous at a moment when no one trusts money or power. Balenciaga’s clothing—which is often compared to (or derided as) “memes” online—demonstrates a knowledge of that tension, “so you can LARP as part of the precariat by wearing Balenciaga, which makes it look like you’re just a cool kid who’s mixing the codes.” The house systematically unpacks and recomodifies fashion itself: “Balenciaga has reframed luxury as knowledge of the codes, as opposed to just these cheating, Trump-era ideas of what something luxurious looks like.”