Reporter | Huang Shan
Edit | Lou Shuqin
"Balenciaga's new product didn't disappoint me." A netizen joked in the Little Red Book. The accompanying picture is a pair of black and white bow earrings recently listed by Balenciaga Balenciaga, woven from sneaker laces through brass stud earrings, and priced for 1900 yuan in the brand's Tmall flagship store.
It's a new product from Balenciaga in autumn 2022 called "Plate Bow", and the brass stud earrings are also engraved with the words "Balenciaga" and "Made in Italy". At the same time, there was also a bracelet made of Paenciaga daddy shoes and shoelaces, which was priced at 1900 yuan.
However, much of the social media discussion focused on simple materials for shoelaces. Some people question that this is an "IQ tax", and some netizens joke that this is a new method of "brand consumption inventory"?
Demena Gvasalia, creative director of the Balenciaga brand, also inspired some netizens to do it. On the Little Red Book, some netizens shared the process of weaving bows with their own black and white sneaker laces, which seemed to set off a burst of shoelace earring style.
Recently, the topic of "Balenciaga 12,000 yuan new bag like a big garbage bag" has also rushed to Weibo's hot search, and the cumulative reading volume as of the interface fashion is 270 million.
The so-called "big garbage bag" is the new 2022 winter bag "Trash Pouch" that Balenciaga has just launched on the European market. True to its name, creative director Demena Gvasalia has designed the same bag of garbage that is commonly used in life, and first appeared on the Balenciaga Winter 2022 Ready-to-Wear Series runway in March 2022.
The Balenciaga "garbage bag" now on the market has a total of 4 colors, in addition to the black and white models that appear on the runway, but also the addition of yellow and blue two colors. The bags are made of calfskin leather and are vaguely engraved with the words "Balenciaga".
At present, the new Balenciaga Trash Pouch bag bag has not yet landed in the Chinese market, and the price in overseas markets is 1790 US dollars, equivalent to more than 12,000 yuan.
The blue "garbage bag" shares a color with the IKEA IKEA shopping bag, as if it is a cross-time echo of the blue pitot bag that Miriam imitated the design of the IKEA shopping bag a few years ago.
In fact, the discussion of Balenciaga's new "garbage bag" is not much different from the past. Reviews such as "Curiosity Hunt" have been with Balenciaga under the leadership of Demena Gvasalia for many years.
From Triple S daddy shoes, muffin hole shoes with Crocs, deliberately old and dirty Paris canvas shoes, to the official Instagram account that shares various weird pictures, Balenciaga's image of "judging ugly" but daring to be the first is simply deeply rooted in people's hearts.
Creative Director Demena Gvasalia herself does not hide her determination to play the role of a hipster in the "ugly culture". When the Rush Pouch bag was released earlier this year, he told Women's Daily, "I can't afford to miss the opportunity to create the most expensive garbage bag in the world, because who doesn't love fashion scandals?" ”
On the one hand, the ugly fashion has attracted questions and criticism from netizens, but on the other hand, it has also brought continuous attention to the brand on social media.
Demna Gvasalia knows this well. In the spring of 2022, Balenciaga launched a "vegetable basket bag" and a "plastic bag shopping bag", which were sold for 2250 euros (about 16130 yuan) and 990 euros (about 7000 yuan) on the official website, respectively. Not surprisingly, these products have sparked enough discussion.
To some extent, this can explain why Balenciaga has always been at the center of public opinion. It should be realized that since Demena Gvasalia took the helm of the brand's creative work, Balenciaga has maintained a huge market influence, and even let some other luxury brands participate in the construction of similar narratives, changing their original brand communication methods.