Balenciaga Creative Director Demna Gvasalia announced this past Tuesday that the newest collection will be showing the men’s and women’s collection together for the first time, adding to the growing list of dual-gender runways.
Gvasalia has rust relaunched Balenciaga’s menswear business last June, and so far, has shown three new collections as part of Men’s Fashion Week in Paris. Suggesting the menswear collections have been well-received, the label has announced that it will start launching men’s pre-collections, beginning with a pre-fall range to be shown in January.
A handful of other luxury brands have begun showing their men’s and women’s collections together in their recent seasons including Kenzo, Burberry, Calvin Klein, and Gucci. Gucci and Balenciaga are both owned by Kering. When Gucci announced its plans for gender unification, the New York Times has reported that Kering was using Gucci as a “test case”, saying it would apply the concept to their other brands if it was successful.
The Gvasalia label has already had a lot of success this year alone, especially after they were named as the top brand during Q3 by the Lyst Index partnership with the Business of Fashion.
The brand is set to present the menswear and womenswear together during Paris Fashion Week in March 2018.
