Inside Demna and Balenciaga’s Daring Second Act

Still, at the time, chatter that Demna would lose his job, or quit, was inescapable. Balenciaga and parent company Kering ultimately stood by their star designer, but Demna says he was emotionally devastated and his work appeared creatively bowed. His first show after the episode, in March 2023, was flat and benign—essentially a rehash of his greatest hits, lacking all the bite that had made his vision so exciting. More than the mud show or the scandal itself, this felt like Demna’s lowest moment, when we had to confront the once unthinkable possibility that his best work might be behind him. Demna refers to it as the “show I forgot.”

I ask him how he regards the scandal now. “The situation and also the aftermath, for me personally, was hard-core,” Demna says. “I was very hurt by it. But today, I’m starting to see the benefits in myself, in the way I see my work, my future, my career, the world around me. It didn’t kill me, just like many other things that happened to me in my life. It just made me stronger. It made me realize that my actual shelter is myself.”

Demna doesn’t typically wear masks these days, but he kept one of the beanies in his back pocket at The Met. Just in case. He clutched the beanie like a safety blanket all night, but decided not to wear it as he caught up with Kardashian and starred in his own Night at the Museum. “I was like, it’s my way of controlling things, and I don’t want to be controlling in this situation.” It was, he says, “the first time I really felt like I wanted to let it go.” (When I ask him why he wore the beanie in the portraits for this story, which were taken shortly before he left his hotel for the gala, he replies: “Well, I just think it’s cool. It’s no longer about hiding.”)

I raise the perhaps obvious observation that the scandal appeared to be the moment when Demna dropped the mask.

“Exactly,” he says. “I had a Demna coming out because of it. It triggered my own acceptance of myself. It triggered a desire in me to learn how to love myself, a desire that seven years of therapy couldn’t get me to.”

SHANGHAI

When I pull up to the imposing neo–Art Deco Peninsula Hotel in Shanghai to meet Demna at the end of May, I first have to slide through dozens upon dozens of polite, young celebrity watchers. As I navigate my way into the vast, empty courtyard, the crowd, which up till now has been raptly and quietly training their eyes on the hotel entrance, turn their phones in unison in my direction. Woo! someone yells.

Upstairs, I enter Demna’s suite, all dark lacquer and velour and mirror, like somewhere Henry Kissinger and Zhou Enlai would have held smoky bilaterals. In about five hours, Demna will present his spring 2025 collection with a runway show set against the megacity’s futuristic skyline.