Demna on the Record: The Balenciaga Designer on the Brand’s Controversy and His Path Forward

Yet at the same time I am a person; a person who has complexes and feelings; a person who has had many issues with my name, and I have been trying to find ways to make it easier for myself this past year. So, covering my face meant I wouldn’t need to care about how I look in pictures, or on the internet, or at the Met. It wasn’t hiding behind [a mask]; it was to make it easier to deal with the focus, and the spotlight that naturally comes with the job that I do.

In my case I never looked for that [spotlight]; it was something I had to get used to, to learn how to deal with by myself. When a vision for the brand is there, it has an impact: The person behind the vision is put in the spotlight, and willingly—or unwillingly—becomes part of celebrity culture in some way. It is part of my job, but I don’t feel part of it. That’s something that I’ve not really managed to communicate in the right way, because everybody wants to be a celebrity, but I am an introvert who actually just wants to be in my atelier.

What concerns my decision to go by my first name is a really personal, and somehow artistic choice, as well. I just considered it more appropriate for me to go by my first name because, like wearing the mask, it made it easier for me to deal with my position and what that represents. Sixty percent of the time [my surname] was either said or spelled the wrong way, and I had a bit of a problem with that, and it was associated with my previous project [Vetements]. I wanted to detach myself from my past career, and just present myself as Demna.

How does the return to emphasizing the craft of creating and making clothes factor into what you will show and how you will show in March?

The set of the show will be intentionally simple, to be able to focus on the collection and really bring attention to that. I am leaving it to the essentials: collection, sound, light. I am excited about that. That’s more in line with who I am, who I am becoming, evolving into. And it also corresponds much closer to the heritage of this house. We’ll show a lot of clothes, clothes that involve a lot of work.

Can you expand on what the collection will actually look like?

It’s an evolution. When I work on couture, there is a very direct link to the heritage and to Cristóbal’s work, which has not been translated enough to the ready-to-wear yet. And I think the March collection will have a lot of those elements. I want to keep you surprised as to what you will see, but there will be three parts: One part is really based on tailoring and a lot of experimentation with that, cutting, deconstructing, and reconstructing, which is my base in dressmaking. There will be another part where the work is on silhouette and really more fashion orientated, very, like, shape. And in the third part, which I feel is most connected to the heritage of the house, not so much the couture, as I don’t want to have this overlap, but in the way I see modern elegance. There will be things that I think we don’t really do much in our ready-to-wear shows, for sure.