Not in a bad way or anything but what’s happening to luxury designer fashion? There’s a few brands like Balenciaga and MSGM completely flipping the game with their new style of campaign imagery from art direction and graphic design that we see in the new season imagery this year.

Branding takes a long time to filter through channels without exploding prematurely, especially when you are changing an entire image to catch up to current trends, but it seems ever since Balenciaga gained Demna Gvasalia in 2015, you can totally see the changes from then to now. It seems they have been drip feeding us changes through the last couple of years of the innovative and futuristic influences where we can now see the final stages of the rebranding process. 

We know through fashion when a brand goes through this, a brands essence is never lost but a discovery of an important heritage becomes a huge platform to develop from. Sure we have seen plenty of huge luxury giants go back to their roots and shine a light in their campaigns and runways what is ultimately important by showing customers (and window shoppers) that they have a story, making it easier for adoption to a product because there is a heart as well as a peng handbag. We young people like a story and loved to be persuaded. Without diving in too deeply as this would be a totally different topic but brands like Burberry and Mochino have totally reinvented their roots and focused on the elements that make them a great brand and have totally transformed themselves into an innovator. 

Back to Balenciaga. When you compare their Fall 15 campaign and see how arty their humble beginnings derived from to now, they were ultimately just a kooky high fashion brand. Leave the one dimensional stuff in 2015 please and adapt is probably the motto painted in their offices. We now see Balenciaga adopting this almost PC music/SOPHIE vibe way of altering and skewing a typical view of how we view the brand and its models that has been developing over time. B’s styling has firstly catapulted into the trend of sports luxe and of course Dad Trainers by using and shooting a luxury brand differently and having key pieces become a huge identifier of the times we are in. Just look at what the Ikea bag did. 

Secondly we see Balenciaga leave their traditional art direction behind in the new campaigns by using incredibly unique models - almost seemingly bland but still edgy - absolutely dripped in the entire collection creating a new way of how to layer and making clunky trainers, jogging pants and suit blazer acceptable. Now we see their Summer 2019 campaign focused on The Matrix - 90s future realness - and now using trippy graphics of models thanks to a new graphic designer (very FKA TWIGS) using bad (but cool) graphics and trippy art videos showing again this obsession we have with home video editing. It’s completely psychedelic and different for the brand and at least it’s creating something that’s using technology, art and fashion and setting their own rhythm to become far ahead of the game. Instead of being in this high fashion brand only club, they have let us into a world where we couldn't necessarily relate to.  

Will this be the brand for the next few years? Will other brands adopt rebranding in how Balenciaga have? What’s next? 

To finish, remember the huge television moment when Myrtle’s last words in American Horror Story Coven in 2014 whilst being burnt at the stake were “BALENCIAGA!”  well I guess it turned out to be a pretty good one to say in the end. 

There’s no doubt this album has highlighted huge factors in the music industry as well as inspiring black women / LGBT+ and women in general. As Adele once said when she won her Grammy Album of the Year to Beyonce in 2017, when the monumental Lemonade album came out, - “the way you make my black friends feel is empowering and you make them stand up for themselves” - this greatly sums up what these two women are doing and When I get home is a perfect representative of where art/fashion is going with music. 

Hip Hop, R&B, Rap artists are taking their music videos to new heights and has begun a new type of “MTV generation” making music videos extremely important again. Fashion music is being seen in videos now from artists to A$AP Rocky, Travis Scott, SZA and Solange making everything so visually appealing. 

Solange has released a visual album, like Beyonce, but really showing a different side of the artist and showing that black women can embrace their heritage and feel confident in using their creative capabilities that may not be unleashed yet therefore inspiring generations. Solange displays this in her interludes in all her albums involving strong words from black women encouraging assurance, beauty and reaching for your dreams which a lot of girls relating to Solange and the genres mentioned, inspiration. It’s working. We now see so much involvement and beautiful creativity online from great women celebrating themselves. 

“ It's not about the physical manifestation of sex. Now we deal with the freak’n. But that's in volume two! First, I'm tryna get the woman to understand the dynamic power and the spiritual energy. Do you realize how magnificent you are? The god that created you is a divine architect that created the moon, the sun, the stars, Jupiter, Mars, Pluto, Venus. We are not only sexual beings, we are the walking embodiment of god consciousness” - We Deal With The Freak’n.

When I get home contains many musical influences that are shown clearly from Hip Hop/ Trap in Almeda, Soul in Way To The Show , Reggae in Binz, Rap in My Skin My Logo to Funk in Stay Flo, all perfectly showing that you can do it all and develop feelings of being sexy, feeling hard, feminine, masculine and the feeling of sadness. 

The art direction of the visual aspects are simple yet beautiful, like her bare and raw voice recorded on the whole thing, which all mix well in the mellow tapestry shes created. The videos focus on unique women mainly in suits or the completely opposite, in thigh high boots and bras. This screams at me “YOU CAN DO BOTH” and not fit into one box which her interlude Can I Hold The Mic. 

“ I can't be a singular expression of myself, there's too many parts, too many spaces, too many manifestations, too many lines, too many curves, too many troubles, too many journeys, too many mountains, too many rivers, so many” - Can I Hold The Mic

To end this on a cheesy note, the album has me saying, When I Get Home imma listen to this god damn album.