Balenciaga Fall 2018 - Runway Review

First, Bernie Sanders. Now Joey Tribbiani? 

Balenciaga creative director Demna Gvasalia has taken the storied French fashion house in a multitude of design points in the short two years he has been at the helm, but with profits continuing to rise, all signs point upward in his creative freedom of expression. For Fall 2018, the Georgia-born designer took a slightly more pared-down approach, infusing elements of Cristobal Balenciaga's original house codes -- rounded dresses in classic fabrications like embroidery and lace -- into a hugely wearable collection.

The show opened with a series of sharp mini-dresses -- some in crushed velvet, others in a floral-patterned silk. That gave way to the perfectly-exaggerated hourglass silhouettes, in which coats, suit jackets and masculine blazers marched out in tailored patterns of plaid, houndstooth and check. To satiate the hypebeast clients, there was, of course, no shortage of familiar Gvasalia touches. Set against an Instagram-friendly backdrop of a spray-painted snowboarding mountain (paging Chloe Kim), there were over-the-knee heeled sock boots, new "gorpcore" sneakers, "Matrix"-friendly sunglasses and graphic, oversized hoodies and tees, which came with a charitable twist: many of the cotton styles bore the World Food Programme logo, an organization to which Balenciaga has already donated 250,000 euros and has pledged to contribute 10 perfect from every Fall 2018 item bearing the logo sold. 

And for the finale, the aforementioned "Friends" character mention, a seeming ode to Mr. Tribbiani himself that redefined the art of dressing in layers. Turtleneck-underneath-sweatshirt-underneath-flannel-underneath-pod-like parka. "Hey...how YOU doin'?"