Balenciaga, Pierpaolo Piccioli is the new creative director

Balenciaga has a new creative director: Pierpaolo Piccioli, confirming the rumours that had been circulating with insistence and as per the vaticinium of the very informed and always punctual Boring Not Com, which had already made the announcement five days ago. Prescience and insider trading aside - having trusted informants is real wealth in the attention economy - the news, just released by the Parisian maison, accompanied by an honest and heartfelt missive from Piccioli, is one that bodes well, in the unstoppable tectonics that is in fact rewriting the leadership of the big brands in a singular turnover that does not see the emergence of new names but rather a redistribution of houses and leadership posts.

Piccioli, whose more than twenty-year relationship with the maison Valentino had ended rather abruptly in the spring of 2024 (the brand is now headed by Alessandro Michele) is a shrewd and well-considered choice, alien to the frenzied search for the cool factor that often brings to the forefront names whose echo is not the same as talent. Sensibility, craftsmanship, a taste for purity that amplifies the emotional vibration, singular colourism are all characters that define the authorship of Piccioli, to whom we must give credit for having been one of the few authentic modernisers of haute couture, capable of combining dream and timeliness in a vision that is present and possible, not escapist or costuming.

Balenciaga is by definition itself a maison de couture, and this will leave Piccioli, whose last phase at Valentino had appeared somewhat tired, ample room for manoeuvre and new energy to pursue this imaginative investigation. His innate grace, then, can only be good for Balenciaga, where the expressionist and rough signature of Demna (since last March appointed creative director of Gucci, which like Balenciaga is part of the Kering group) had by now reached the point of immobility through saturation. A welcome sense of continuity is the glue that binds it all together, so that Piccioli will take Demna's place in a planned succession that is the exact opposite of the abrupt ouster: Demna, in fact, will present his latest couture collection on 10 July, while Pierpaolo Piccioli will debut with ready-to-wear in October.

Piccioli's words are full of meaning: 'What I receive today is a brand full of possibilities, incredibly fascinating. I must first of all thank Demna; I have always admired his talent and vision. I could not have wished for a better passing of the baton. She has paid homage to Cristóbal in her own way, sharing his point of view while keeping his identity alive. This gives me the opportunity to shape a new version, adding another chapter with a new story. My chapter of the Maison Balenciaga'. The rest, at the moment, is only supposition, but the wait is short and the talent makes one say: ad maiora.