Throughout his tenure at Balenciaga, Demna has stared into the barrel of consumerism, posing uncomfortable questions to an unwitting audience of spendthrifts. What if the runway was a warzone? What happens when the most famous woman in the world is rendered uncrecognisable? And why do straight men love to sleep on a single mattress slung across the floor? In a new collaboration with the Dutch artist Tejo Remy, Balenciaga has just released a multicoloured bundle of fuzzy blankets, held together with nylon cords – which is precisely the kind of thing you might expect to find in the pallet-strewn bedroom of a man who moonlights as an amateur poet on Hinge.

The bench-cum-mattress has been a fixture of the brand’s flagship locations but is now retailing for up to $46,300. Obviously, high end brands have always up-sold quotidian items and Balenciaga’s latest drop included camping utensils, baubles, and crockery for hundreds, if not thousands, of pounds. “I am convinced Balenciaga is an elaborate prank or social experiment,” one Instagram user said of the so-called fuckboy mattress… god forbid they log onto Hermès.com and see dog bowls being hawked for £850. To see a young man sleep on a jumble of novelty blankets, as they are wont to do, channels the same kind of self-punishment that propels people to run ultra-long marathons – and it harbours some serious questions about the mental wellbeing of heterosexual men.

Because why does a straight man’s bed consist of a sorry little pillow and a Toy Story duvet chucked on a mattress on the floor? Why’s the flat sheet gone yellow? Why have its corners come loose? Why are there Doritos in its crevices? Is it a bed or is it a laundry bin? Why do straight men decorate their bedroom like a tortured painter living in an artist’s squat? Are they in fact lonely field mice burrowing in clumps of hay? Or are they marketing managers who work in Liverpool Street? How do straight men sleep at night? Are straight men the new neanderthals? Are neanderthals the new straight men? 

People have always taken umbrage with Demna’s subversive designs, which twists bin bags, crisp packets, and DHL t-shirts into luxury accoutrements. But having played with the codes and symbols of corporate culture since his Vetements days, he’s now done explaining himself. “I hate boxes and I hate labels and I hate being labelled and placed in a box. Society, the internet, and the world in general loves doing that, because it feels safe that way,” read his most recent show notes. “Every day becomes a battlefield to defend this unique identity. And the more you try to be yourself the more you get punched in your face… I’ve decided to no longer explain my collections and verbalise my designs, but to express a state of mind” – a commitment he took one step further when he removed himself from the mill of Twitter discourse last week.