Next Gen

This shoe represents something greater than a single luxury brand or business, and I don't mean to disrespect it's designer.

The severe influence a fashion trend has on us is onlyequivalent to the time in which it began. This shoe was unthinkable in 1937, when Balenciaga's original founder Cristóbal Balenciaga opened his haute couture house in Paris, France. Therefore this shoe>artwork>commentary would have been impossible to have come from that timeframe. Leaving this piece to serve as a freeze-frame from a moment in which this shoe was a ground-breaking item.

The shoe perfectly embodies Cristóbal Balenciaga's core values of innovation and exclusivity. However, being released in 2017 it also represents part of the historical shift from timeless, enduring pieces to fleeting fashion trends. Retrospectively, Balenciaga's contemporary shoe designs were a key influence for, though weren't meant to be a part of, the ugly shoe movement. Regardless, the trend and shoe have been a serious success.

Undeniably, the intense hype around such trends trickles down into fast fashion culture, contributing to issues like excessive waste due to rapidly changing trends, exploitative labor practices from lower quality knock-of brands such as Shein, and convincing ourselves of spending our last dollars to fit in via buying that latest item only to stop wearing it a couple years later.

Balenciaga 1950

Balenciaga 2023