Initial reaction:

Rebellious daughters of societal swans taking apart their inherited Balenciaga couture (the original ovoid egg-like shapes created by Cristobal Balenciaga), stapling them back together again and defacing them with piercings – to subvert their mother’s stiffened ensembles. Alexander Wang considered the past, the present and the future clientele of the house and combined all three into a proposition that felt like it had real teeth, balancing Wang’s own eye for the wicked with the house’s codes. 

Subverted elegance:

Lady Gaga was the embodiment of this rebel-meets-regal collision, as she vamped her way down the catwalk before the show started, doing a wiggle walk in a curved little black dress, brandished with a dagger brooch initialled with “CB”. “We liked this idea of heirlooms being passed down and taking the familiar and referential and then twisting it,” said Wang, “There’s an ulterior polarising effect.” There was evidence of this darkened twisting everywhere – in the embroideries that from afar looked like opulent sequins but were in fact cut up razor blades, in the seams of dresses that had been taken apart and stapled back together. Grey tweed skirts were sprayed with a violent jet of neon graffiti, while Beaver and astrakhan furs were imitated by the sort of more-than-meets-the-eye techniques that Wang has been pushing since the beginning of his tenure at the house. If you turned the girls to the side, the broken up brooches which pierced the ear summed up the way Wang has strikingly pierced through the house’s archives. 

No pain, no gain:

Wang referenced Ethel Granger, wife of William Arnold Granger, who was famed for her 13-inch waist – achieved by corsetry and encouraged (some say coerced) by her husband. William once wrote, “Nothing is more repulsive to the faddist than to see a feminine ear squashed flat with a clip or screw. How can this compete with the dainty piercing from which jewels swing free?” William’s stringent symbolist vision of femininity and fashion along with images of Ethel’s ears and nose hung with metal, collectively infiltrated the collection. Wang’s Balenciaga femmes hobbled in bulbous pencil skirts and teetered in PVC heels, taking small steps, heavy with metal and hardware. It felt like the most extreme vision of the brand in the eyes of Wang thus far.