Looks like Kim Kardashian and Kanye West got equal custody of Demna in their divorce, after all – less than a month after Ye announced his three way collaboration with Demna and GAP, Kimberly has today been revealed as the new face of Balenciaga. The billionaire social media mogul stars alongside other house muses, among them Isabelle Huppert, in a series of intimate, at home images shot by Stef Mitchell.
Though the fashion house has been playing more expressly with the tenets of celebrity and entertainment – casting Justin Bieber in three of their campaigns and collaborating with The Simpsons, while its creative director iconises himself on a first-name basis – the decision to cast Kim marks a sea change in Balenciaga’s approach. For a long time, the brand’s Instagram was a jigsaw of photos taken of pale, sullen artists and dour, Victorian-looking, Berlin scene kids, but recent seasons have seen the label’s look transformed by megawatt, high-octane cameos.
It’s clear that Demna has become obsessed with the limits of fame and notoriety. His creative direction of Kardashian, in face-obscuring, head-to-toe, morph suits has rendered the most recognisable women on the planet pretty much faceless. Today’s campaign feels a little less severe in its treatment of fame, though, capturing its muses wherever they live and work. Kardashian is seen in her Calabasas home, Huppert in Paris, while Bieber is photographed in his Los Angeles studio.
Beyond her own projects, this is Kim’s first fashion campaign since 2014, when she and Kanye West fronted Balmain’s SS15 collection. At the tail end of a Fendi collaboration, it marks Kim’s final ascent into the lap of high fashion, amplifying her powers of self(ie)-branding onto luxury’s main stage. Flanked by Hourglass bags, Pantaleggings, Falkon Bodysuits, and Twisted tailoring, together, Kardashian, Huppert, and Bieber form the Balenciaga lodestones – the pop-culture princess, the hypebeast, and the chic Parisienne.
See more of the campaign in the galley above.