Pierpaolo Piccioli on inheriting one of fashion&rsquo;s great legacies&mdash;alongside Balenciaga images selected by the designer himself from the L&rsquo;OFFICIEL archive.

On the day of his appointment as creative director of Balenciaga, Pierpaolo Piccioli published an open letter. In it, he wrote:
Balenciaga is what it is today thanks to all the people who have paved the way&mdash;Crist&oacute;bal, Nicolas [Ghesqui&egrave;re], Alex [Wang], Demna&hellip; Crist&oacute;bal Balenciaga&rsquo;s legacy and archive is probably one of the most influential fashion statements of all time. He has done everything before everyone; he has literally invented the culture of creativity; he has infused the idea of couture in every aspect of his career, and he has shown, through his creations, the power of evolution and innovation. What I am receiving today is a brand full of possibilities that is incredibly fascinating&hellip; This gives me the chance to shape a new version of the Maison, adding another chapter with a new story.
These words signal reverence and ambition. In 2027, Balenciaga will celebrate the 110th anniversary of its founding and the 90th anniversary of its arrival in Paris within the world of haute couture. After shaping the universe of Valentino across roughly 25 years (16 of them as creative director), the Italian designer is preparing to write his own chapter within Balenciaga&rsquo;s history.
&ldquo;I want to follow my instinct, to be able to go in any direction without betraying the past,&rdquo; he tells L&rsquo;OFFICIEL. &ldquo;Balenciaga is creativity, and creativity is the map to follow.&rdquo;

Image from L'OFFICIEL n. 200 of 1937.

Image from L'OFFICIEL n. 551 of 1968.

L&rsquo;OFFICIEL: Your arrival at Balenciaga has intrigued the entire fashion industry. What pushed you to accept this challenge, and what did it mean for you to enter a maison with such an important legacy?
PIERPAOLO PICCIOLI: To tell a story of innovation, to rethink a brand through my own interpretation. Approaching a house that has always stood for this interested me. The idea of starting a project that is stimulating precisely because there is no fixed path, no map. Crist&oacute;bal has been one of my heroes, first as a source of inspiration and also as someone who always followed his own personal path without looking around. He was a creative who did things differently from others, at a time when being so disruptive and innovative was far from obvious.
L&rsquo;O: When you began looking into the world of Crist&oacute;bal Balenciaga, was there something that drew you in, or that you immediately felt aligned with?
PPP: I was immediately fascinated by the idea that there were no maps. His path was never about retracing steps, but always about doing new things, following a mental and emotional trajectory. You don&rsquo;t remember just one silhouette by Crist&oacute;bal&mdash;you remember many, because all of them are credible. That&rsquo;s what I relate to most. I don&rsquo;t like repeating silhouettes; I prefer inventing new ones using the same method.
In my first show last October, many thought some silhouettes came from Balenciaga&rsquo;s history. In reality, they were new&mdash;Crist&oacute;bal never made them. But they were faithful to his path, which for me is the most beautiful thing: creating something new while following the same spirit of creativity.

Images taken from L'OFFICIEL n. 234 of 1941.

Image from L'OFFICIEL n. 301 of 1947.

L&rsquo;O: How would you define Crist&oacute;bal Balenciaga&rsquo;s work?
PPP: Innovation first. And then the idea of seeing a designer as if he were a sculptor, philosopher, or painter. His choices were always tied to a specific historical moment&mdash;and they carried real social meaning. Just think of the liberation of women from the heavy garments in which they had been constrained.
The &ldquo;sack dress&rdquo; of 1957 weighed less than a kilo, whereas women had been wearing outfits of more than 9 kilos. What fascinates me about Crist&oacute;bal is his ability to operate within reality, to do his work in a way that was relevant in a specific historical moment. I like his constant engagement with the body; for me, it is something I strongly relate to. Telling the story of the human body and placing it at the center, using it as a unit of measurement, as Leonardo da Vinci did. Turning it into a metric through which creativity becomes more scientific, more conscious. And above all, it is creativity applied to everyday life.
L&rsquo;O: You have always had, even in your past work, this fundamental attention to the body, which has helped ensure that your clothes always remained grounded in the reality of everyday life.
PPP: What a designer creates must land in everyday life, but it must begin from a dream, an idea. It must relate to a body, care for it, protect it. In fashion, there are not only patterns; you must always start from the body, from the mannequin, in order to create. The idea of always relating to a body, in my opinion, is the very meaning of fashion. When I hear people say fashion is art, or this dress is so beautiful, it&rsquo;s not fashion but a work of art, it&rsquo;s not necessarily a great compliment. Art serves itself. Fashion serves another body. The principle is different. I don&rsquo;t think making fashion is less than making art&mdash;I don&rsquo;t have that complex&mdash;but I would certainly rather make excellent fashion than bad art.

Image taken from L'OFFICIEL n.331 of 1949.

Image taken from L'OFFICIEL n. 387 of 1949.

L&rsquo;O: You said that you don&rsquo;t like looking to the past. How did you approach the Balenciaga archives?
PPP: I went to Getaria, Spain, to see Crist&oacute;bal&rsquo;s world, his perspective, and his point of view. I wanted to understand where he grew up, what pushed him to pursue fashion, and what led him to leave a small town for Paris. It&rsquo;s a story I feel very close to, having been born in Nettuno. Having a peripheral point of view&mdash;more distant yet somehow enchanted&mdash;gives you the ability to imagine more.
In the archives, what interested me most wasn&rsquo;t the garments themselves&mdash;which I already knew&mdash;but the experience of wearing them. It was a revelation: that severity, that rigor of line you perceive in images, actually corresponds to an uncommon lightness of structure. It&rsquo;s an inverse relationship. In all of Crist&oacute;bal&rsquo;s creations, there is this dichotomy: they are architectural, structural, sculptural, yet light. He approached fashion as an architect approaches space, not as a decorator does. A decorator adds elements to a space, altering its perception. An architect transforms space through space itself.
His genius also led him to create fabric in order to shape forms without adding anything&mdash;indeed, by removing. Keeping the body at the center of the creative conversation, yet distancing from it. But even when he moved away from the body, what he incorporated was air, not another structure. So he introduced a third element into his aesthetic project&mdash;air&mdash;between the body and the fabric, creating a new form.

Image taken from L'OFFICIEL n. 341 of 1950.

L&rsquo;O: What is your first personal memory connected to Balenciaga?
PPP: There isn&rsquo;t a precise one. I have images in my mind of these unique garments with distinct shapes. But something funny happened a few months ago: looking at my Instagram feed, I realized that my very first post, when I created my profile in 2018, was a Crist&oacute;bal dress from 1967&mdash;a white dress with a sculptural hat. I was at the Met in New York for the exhibition Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination, and I was fascinated by that dress displayed in one of the cloisters. It was spontaneous, immediate, visceral fascination.
When I started writing the announcement of my arrival at Balenciaga, that moment came back to me. It was accompanied by a phrase that is a mantra for me: Simplicity is complexity resolved, by Brancusi. Thinking back to that image, that 1967 dress&mdash;which is also my birth year&mdash;that phrase moved me deeply.
L&rsquo;O: Have you ever felt the weight or responsibility of carrying forward such an important legacy?
PPP: Honestly, I&rsquo;ve never felt that weight. Very often, when confronting great masters of fashion, you feel fear or hesitation. But Balenciaga is a &ldquo;weightless&rdquo; brand&mdash;even in its creative concept and garment construction&mdash;so you can&rsquo;t feel weighed down approaching this history. You have to believe you can face Balenciaga without denying what came before.
Demna&rsquo;s work respected Crist&oacute;bal&rsquo;s DNA while choosing his own language. Of course, I would have done things my way, but I don&rsquo;t intend to deny the incredible work that was done. We are a third or fourth generation&mdash;we are interpreters called to tell the future of a brand. The stronger your creative identity, the stronger the result and the future narrative.

Image taken from L'OFFICIEL from no. 339 of 1950.

L&rsquo;O: You have always placed the individual at the center, creating a community of talents, muses, and friends. How are you approaching building your own Balenciaga community?
PPP: Putting people back at the center feels like the most powerful and radical thing you can do right now. More than creating a brand, it&rsquo;s essential to create a world people feel they belong to. It was natural for me to create a community of people who represent my values, my idea of beauty, and who have something to share. I don&rsquo;t look for personalities, but for presences&mdash;people who tell their own story. The more personal those stories are, the more universal they become.
My first advertising campaign was not about the collection&mdash;it&rsquo;s about the Balenciaga community, the new squad of the maison. What connected the cast was their uniqueness. They were all different, yet they shared [the same] values: equality, freedom, and inclusivity.
L&rsquo;O: Alongside your creative work at Valentino, the elevation of the maison&rsquo;s couture culture was fundamental for you. How did you approach Balenciaga from this perspective?
PPP: When you arrive as the creative director of a maison, you work to change the collections and the advertising campaigns. But the biggest thing is changing the culture within. I arrived at Balenciaga without bringing 30 people with me. The culture of every maison is made up of two elements: experimentation&mdash;the work in the atelier, the research into volumes and shapes&mdash;and then the making, the fact that things are handmade. Couture culture must permeate the entire company. It&rsquo;s far more demanding than simply changing the form. For me, the hands&mdash;the people who make the product, those who think alongside me, who follow this journey&mdash;become a fundamental part of my creative process.
Couture is the heart of Balenciaga&rsquo;s history. Different ateliers, each with their own specialization&mdash;and that specificity matters as much in Ready-to-wear as in couture. A T-shirt must be an authentic T-shirt; a men&rsquo;s shirt must be an authentic men&rsquo;s shirt. Then I enjoy mixing the cards: I might want a coat with the same lightness as a chiffon dress, so I ask the person who makes chiffon dresses, because I want to put a different hand on it. But to break the rules, you need specialized hands. The hands that make my vision real are not abstract; they are tied to people with their own history and culture, which they put into everything they do. I try to communicate to them the feeling I want a garment to generate. So the interpretation of the idea by those who physically create the garment becomes essential. It&rsquo;s a collective journey, a story told by people you come to know deeply. I&rsquo;m getting to know everyone little by little, building empathy through daily conversation. Because each person puts love into a garment&mdash;not just technique. Technique is mechanical, but love is needed.

Cover of L'OFFICIEL n. 349 of 1951.

Image from L'OFFICIEL n. 351 of 1951.

L&rsquo;O: How difficult is it to balance technique and emotion in a creation? And how do you work to find the perfect equilibrium?
PPP: Yesterday I saw a fitting for a couture dress [Piccioli&rsquo;s first haute couture collection for the maison will be unveiled in July], and I told the atelier that I could see too much technique. Technique must almost disappear&mdash;it must be invisible. The result should feel effortless. Seeing the technique is like revealing a secret&mdash;you have to erase it to arrive at the magic. All of Crist&oacute;bal Balenciaga&rsquo;s creations were always accompanied by a visual, sensory emotion that overshadowed technique; they were a spell.
L&rsquo;O: What do you have in mind for Balenciaga?
PPP: I want to follow my instinct, to be able to move in any direction without betraying the past. A kind of creative stream of consciousness. There is a moment of obligation, when you are aware of your past&mdash;but then there comes a moment when you must forget it in order to face the future lightly. Conscious, but free. That&rsquo;s how I feel now.

Image from L'OFFICIEL n. 365 of 1952.

Image from L'OFFICIEL n. 391 of 1954.

More than creating a brand, it&rsquo;s essential to create a world people feel they belong to.

Inside the Balenciaga Archives With Pierpaolo Piccioli

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