Today at Men’s Fashion Week in Paris, Balenciaga showed a melange of gear emblazoned with Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign logo except with his name replaced with the Balenciaga logo. Because nothing says Bernie Sanders like $2,700 sport coats and $445 short pants!
The Bernieciaga logo, which landed on satin bombers and shawls and was paired with workaday khakis inspired by Sanders’s Congressional uniform, was created by semi-new Balenciaga creative director Demna Gvasalia, who rose to fame with Vetements’s irony-filled collaborations and who has a marked obsession with contemporary Americana. But what at first seemed fresh and cool and exciting in streetwear culture has quickly soured; though his cuts are interesting, the logo obsession has crossed over into cynicism, and it’s beginning to feel like a one-trick pony. I’m not going to say this guy is exploiting Bernie Sanders, a cool guy I didn’t vote for, but I am going to say he’s trying to exploit Bernie Sanders’s cachet, particularly among people who maybe didn’t notice what happened in the U.S. in December. (Or those who noticed way too hard.)
Whatever it is, we have it now. I look forward to my mentions going to shit on both Berniebro Twitter and Fashion Twitter. We’ll never know if he could have won, but at least we’ll know what your rich friends will be wearing in fall. Here’s the whole American Psycho style show.
