The Fashion Disrup tor

The creative mind behind Balenciaga's US$2.3 billion revenue speaks on the past, present and future of couture

- Cherry Mui

"My plan is to try not to do anything for two weeks, and to enjoy Mediterranean sunsets with Lana del Rey music in the background," Demna tells Tatler ahead of his summer holiday, a few weeks after presenting his second haute couture collection for Balenciaga in July.

If you pay even the slightest attention to fashion business, you'll know that, while much of the industry has struggled during the pandemic, Balenciaga gone from strength to strength. In 2019, its parent company Kering revealed that the French label was set to surpass €1 billion (approximately US$1.12 billion) in revenue; according to Bloomberg, it stood at an estimated US$2.3 billion in 2021.

This seed of success was planted in 2015 when Kering approached Demna who no longer uses his family name Gvasalia professionally, to separate his private self from his work persona to lead the brand.

Now, seven years into his tenure at Balenciaga, the Georgian designer has disrupted, if not fashion history, certainly the fashion of this generation.

In the past two years, the house has launched a multitude of groundbreaking projects. It powered up in the gaming world with its line for popular video game Fortnite, as well as its autumn-winter 2021 collection release, which was presented as a game called Afterworld: The Age of Tomorrow. The brand also blurred conventionally rigid boundaries through its crossovers and activations,