Balenciaga Visa Versa Valentino or Drunken Game of Thrones. Article of Eleonora de Gray, Editor-in-Chief of RUNWAY MAGAZINE. Photo Courtesy: Kering / Valentino / Balenciaga.

Introduction: A Drunken Game of Thrones

Two weeks ago—on May 20, 2025—Balenciaga, the brand once dragged through the mud of controversy and deemed beyond restoration, announced a new creative director. And not just anyone.

Pierpaolo Piccioli.

Refined. Kind. Exceptionally talented. One of the last couturiers standing. A man who speaks the language of beauty without shouting. A man who knows how to sculpt silence into elegance. A man who, if I may be personal, I profoundly admire.

The announcement hit like a misplaced bishop on a crooked chessboard—shocking not because of the move itself, but because it came after another announcement that had already left the fashion world visibly nauseous.

A few weeks prior, Kering dropped a press release that could only be described as lunar: Demna Gvasalia to lead Gucci. Yes. That Demna. The same one who emptied Balenciaga of all its legacy, dressed trauma in latex, and sold devastation as aesthetic. Now tasked with reshaping Gucci.

I gave it two weeks.

Two weeks of quiet hope that someone—anyone—in this industry would have the courage to say something. To unpack this game. To raise a brow. To write the op-ed. But no one did. Not the experts. Not the analysts. Not the critics. Only silence, diluted through press-release paraphrasing and corporate praise-singing.

So here we are.

I’ve waited long enough. And I have quite a few things to say.

Press-release – Pierpaolo Piccioli New Creative Director of Balenciaga

Kering and Balenciaga are pleased to announce the appointment of Pierpaolo Piccioli as Creative Director of Balenciaga, effective July 10.
An accomplished and respected designer, and master of Haute Couture, Pierpaolo will bring his unique creative vision and extensive experience to Balenciaga, building on the strengths and success achieved by the brand over the past decade under Demna’s creative direction, and in continuity with the legacy of Cristóbal Balenciaga.
Francesca Bellettini, Kering Deputy CEO: “I couldn’t be happier to welcome Pierpaolo to the Group. He is one of the most talented and celebrated designers of today. His mastery of Couture, his creative voice, and his passion for savoir-faire made him the ideal choice. I would also like to sincerely thank Demna for the bold, distinctive vision he brought to Balenciaga over the past 10 years, shaping the House’s identity in the contemporary era. I am convinced that Pierpaolo and Gianfranco will lead Balenciaga perfectly through this important new chapter of its remarkable history”.
Gianfranco Gianangeli, Balenciaga CEO: “I’m excited to begin this era at Balenciaga with Pierpaolo. His creative vision will thrive, he will perfectly interpret our legacy, building on the House’s bold creativity, rich heritage and strong culture. With the expertise of our teams and the dynamic creative energy that has historically driven Balenciaga, I look forward to what we will build together”.
Pierpaolo Piccioli: “In all its phases, while constantly evolving and changing, Balenciaga has never lost track of the House’s aesthetic values. What I am receiving is a brand full of possibilities that is incredibly fascinating. I must first and foremost thank Demna; I’ve always admired his vision. I couldn’t ask for a better passing of the torch. This gives me the chance to shape a new version of the Maison, adding another chapter with a new story. I am grateful for the trust that François-Henri, Francesca and Gianfranco are giving me. We were effortlessly on the same page from the start, and that is the best way to begin something new”.

“Strengths and Success” — Kering’s Alternate Reality

“Building on the strengths and success achieved by the brand over the past decade under Demna’s creative direction…”

This line from Kering’s press release deserves a standing ovation—at the Théâtre de l’Absurde.

Let’s recap the “strengths” Kering is so eager to celebrate.

A brand once synonymous with architectural elegance and artistic refinement became, under Demna’s direction, a dumping ground for anti-fashion experiments. The craftsmanship of Cristóbal Balenciaga was replaced with duct tape, fake mud, bondage bears, and endless iterations of normcore degradation dressed up as innovation.

Let’s revisit some milestones:

• The Simpsons x Balenciaga Summer 2022: Because when ideas run out, cartoons are always available. Characters from Springfield wore oversized coats and deadpan expressions. This wasn’t innovation. This was licensing in freefall.
• Fall/Winter 2022 “The Lost Tape”: A grainy, melancholic pastiche filmed like a failed art school project. Backwards walking, depressed casting, and VHS degradation—marketed as nostalgia. It was more like visual anesthesia.
• Fall/Winter 2022–2023: The season that introduced us to trash bags as fashion. Black sacks—yes, literal garbage bags—clutched like accessories, offered at $1,790. Demna called it commentary. The world called it what it was: a joke, and not a funny one.
• Spring/Summer 2023 “Nuclear Mud Show”: A spectacle of sludge where models stumbled through a dirt pit in ripped rags and blank stares. Presented as dystopian realism. Delivered as a fashion funeral, held knee-deep in metaphorical and literal filth.
• Balenciaga x Adidas Resort 2023 (New York): BDSM rebranded as streetwear. Gimp masks, dog collars, latexed torsos and lifeless faces—all paraded under the faint glow of legitimacy thanks to a three-stripe logo. It was fashion’s answer to a hostage video.
• Spring/Summer 2024: Minimalist to the point of nothingness. As if a PDF glitched and spat out a collection. Flat colors, disjointed silhouettes, hollow concepts—fashion stripped of identity, then offered back to us as “conceptual.” Collection conceptual piece: “new bride” for Marilyn Manson. Manson, whose actions have inspired murders in the United States, should not be glamorized in any fashion context.
• Fall/Winter 2024–2025: The official start of Balenciaga’s eBay era. Models walked around a sterile white set resembling a second-hand fashion depot. It screamed, “We have no story, so we staged a product photo shoot.” I described it at the time as luxury disintegrating into a Dropbox folder. Nothing changed.
• Balenciaga Couture Fall/Winter 2024–2025: Perhaps the most audacious of all—a fully scripted courtroom drama where Demna put himself on trial. He played both the victim and the judge, flanked by a silent chorus of celebrities turned mannequins. This wasn’t couture. It was performance art masquerading as accountability. An open confession styled in feathers.
• “Dirty Sneakers”: Retailing for €1,450, pre-destroyed and pre-mocked, they looked like they’d been dredged from a burning scrapyard. Sold with a straight face. Kering called it conceptual. The public called it out—and sent them straight to resale platforms and TikTok punchlines.

This was not a decade of strength. It was a decade of erosion.

Legacy was not built. It was bulldozed, slowly, meticulously, until Balenciaga became a parody of itself—an empty shell inflated by PR jargon, peddled by stylists and editors too scared to call the emperor naked.

And the market? It didn’t just whisper its verdict. It screamed.

Saks Fifth Avenue in 2024 alone sent over 100 pages of liquidation emails. Balenciaga: -50%, -70%, CLEARANCE. A luxury house doesn’t flood inboxes like fast fashion unless it’s drowning in unsellable product. And no, these weren’t archive pieces—these were current collections. The same ones hailed as “visionary” by internal memos.

On resale platforms, Balenciaga goods sit between counterfeit Louis Vuitton keychains and used yoga mats—sold not as fashion, but as punchlines.

So when Kering says Pierpaolo will build on Demna’s success, what exactly are they handing him?

A crumbling House? A radioactive brand? Or simply the task of cleaning up after a decade-long deliberate distortion?

Whatever it is, let’s not pretend this is a “passing of the torch.”

It’s damage control.

The House Swap — How Kering Traded Legacy for Chaos

In July 2023, Kering acquired 30% of Valentino from Mayhoola, with an option to purchase the rest by 2028. It was presented as a strategic alliance, a gentle courtship between conglomerates. But anyone with a memory longer than a press cycle knew what was coming.

At the time, Pierpaolo Piccioli stood at the creative helm of Valentino. He had elevated the Maison to poetic heights, redefining modern couture with integrity, restraint, and soul. The founder himself handed Piccioli the keys to the House, calling it a new era.

Little did he know he was locking himself out.

One year later, Piccioli was out—and in his place, Alessandro Michele. The man who turned Gucci into a magpie circus of glittered ghosts and flea-market references was now entrusted with Valentino. And from the first show, it was clear: he came not to build, but to bury.

Act One: Public Toilets and Pilfered Codes

Valentino Resort 2025, where Michele showcased a set of handbags that looked eerily—no, blatantly—like Ralph Lauren’s legendary equestrian leather line. Identical buckles. Identical proportions. Identical top-stitching. These weren’t “inspired by.” These were photocopied.

Even the sales associates—trained to smile through aesthetic calamity—couldn’t suppress their smirks. Nervous laughter filled Valentino boutiques. And for good reason. Ralph Lauren has been producing those bags since the 1980s. Michele’s version felt like counterfeit masquerading as nostalgia.

His debut show for Valentino wasn’t staged in a salon. It was staged in what can only be described as an open-air public toilet installation, complete with cracked tile floors, plastic bin liners, and models arranged like extras from a mid-2000s Berlin squat party. That was Fall/Winter 2025–2026—a collection whose most remarkable quality was its complete detachment from the Valentino legacy.

Act Two: Chanel Earrings, Rebranded Cats, and the Collapse of Meaning

As if plagiarism wasn’t enough, the next round of horrors came courtesy of… “Chanel” earrings. Except they weren’t Chanel. They were Valentino-branded accessories styled to mimic Chanel’s double-C motif, just skewed enough to avoid legal action—but not subtle enough to avoid shame.

And then, as if dragged straight from an ironic Tumblr post circa 2011, came the ultimate insult: Choupette Lagerfeld—Karl’s famously spoiled feline—apparently found a new home… at Valentino. Reintroduced under the cringe-inducing capsule collection called “Chat De La Maison.”

The press release arrived, full of fluff about emotional nostalgia and “Maison pets.” But the collection—a parade of cheap cat motifs, glittered collars, and toddler-grade illustrations—landed in stores quietly, with the air of something trying not to be noticed. A strategy, perhaps.

Because make no mistake: this wasn’t fashion. It was a clearance sale of credibility.

Valentino, once the house of refined sensuality and structured elegance, is now a playground for repackaged clichés and borrowed visual language. Alessandro Michele has turned a legendary Roman fashion house into a moodboard for Etsy sellers.

And what became of Pierpaolo?

Discreetly removed. No scandal. No farewell tour. Just a press release, and then silence. Until Balenciaga—ironically the brand most gutted by aesthetic nihilism—called him back into the fold, offering not couture but a lifeline. From the ashes of Valentino, he now steps into the rubble of Balenciaga.

If this were chess, Kering just sacrificed two queens to promote a pawn dressed as a jester.

Conclusion: The Empire of Misfit Toys

There was a time when Kering built empires. Today, it repurposes ruins.

François-Henri Pinault, once viewed as a shrewd curator of creative talent, now appears more like a bored monarch shuffling pieces across a board he no longer understands. The pattern is unmistakable: appoint, destroy, replace, repeat. A strategy not of vision, but of exhaustion. And the casualties? Heritage. Legacy. Meaning.

Gucci, which once set the tone for an entire decade, has now become the company dumpster—Demna’s new creative playground where discarded aesthetics will be glued back together and sold as subversion. Balenciaga, freshly sterilized and handed to Pierpaolo Piccioli, isn’t a torch. It’s a cautionary tale.

And Valentino? A Roman house once revered for its discipline and silhouette, now reduced to a scrapbook for Alessandro Michele’s unresolved Gucci trauma and Karl Lagerfeld cosplay.

The genius in all this? There isn’t any. What we’re witnessing is not innovation—it’s roulette. A drunken, high-stakes game of corporate fantasy where the only thing consistent is collapse dressed as reinvention. Pinault spins the wheel, and the Houses pay the price.

It doesn’t matter that Pierpaolo is back. It matters where. It doesn’t matter what Alessandro claims to be resurrecting. It matters what he’s burying. And it certainly doesn’t matter what Demna will do at Gucci—we already know. He did it at Balenciaga.

This is not a creative renaissance.

This is an obituary in slow motion.

And while the official press releases will continue—full of words like visionary, bold, and new chapter—the public has already spoken. The screenshots, the markdowns, the resale graveyards—they speak louder than any quarterly statement.

Kering may still control the board. But the board is on fire.

And the House always loses.

In 2024, Kering didn’t just stumble—they faceplanted. Revenue dropped, slashing operating income nearly in half—from €4.75 billion to €2.55 billion. Bravo! Net income? Down 62%. And just to spice things up, the group’s net debt tripled, now sitting comfortably at over €10 billion. As a cherry on top, Kering’s stock plummeted by about 60% over the last two years—hitting lows they haven’t seen. If this is what “strategic reinvention” looks like, we might need a new dictionary. Or a calculator.

If this is Kering’s idea of “strategic reinvention,” then we’re not witnessing leadership—we’re watching a Drunken Game of Thrones: Piccioli moved from Valentino to Balenciaga, Michele from Gucci to Valentino, and Demna from Balenciaga to Gucci.

Crowns were passed like wine goblets at a royal hangover—no vision, no succession, only François-Henri Pinault waltzing through the ruins of his own empire, drunk on past glories and blind to the smoke.