Paris Fashion Week started very well with Demna Gvasalia‘s second menswear collection for Balenciaga. The anticipation was unbearable and the Georgian designer’s outing was worth a wait. Last season, Demna focused on subverted, masculine version of couture – the custom-made jackets and Cristobal Balenciaga’s archival male coats were the starting point of the theme’s exploration. For autumn-winter 2017, Gvasalia continued revisiting men’s elegance, but in even more off-beat away.

Corporate dressing is something the designer likes to tease and reconstruct a lot  – the first looks were ankle-lenght coats with big shoulder pads, strict white-shirt-and-tie looks and leather blazers (torso revealing, of course). But don’t expect neat and business-perfect: the models had nothing, but super-long socks under their coats – à la Soviet ‘sexual maniacs’, who used to scare children in the parks. ‘Corporate’ also relates to those terrificly ugly post-office jackets, which were revamped into covettable puffas and distorted bombers. The bags were pure irony – post-office boys carried huge, Ikea-like totes, mature ‘businessmen’ had their little clutches, while the twisted-entrepreneur types – Balenciaga shopping bags (in leather). Maybe, the last ones had some Balenciaga gifts for their after-hours, secret lovers. Who knows. But that’s a different story.