Balenciaga Sues Ex-Creative Director, Nicolas Ghesquière

System magazine

Rumour has it...Balenciaga is suing its ex-Creative Director, Nicolas Ghesquière.  It may stem from the candid interview Ghesquière gave to System magazine in April after he departed from Balenciaga.  While Ghesquière gave the standard statement when he departed in November, saying, it was a "joint decision to end their working relationship", that was clearly not the entire story.  Ghesquière expressed his dissatisfaction with working at the luxury fashion house to System magazine, calling it "unfufilling" and a "bureaucracy", adding he felt "dehumanized" and "sucked dry".  Very candid indeed.   

Too candid perhaps, as Balenciaga is claiming breach of duty of confidentiality in its lawsuit. Here are a few excerpts from the interview and you can decide for yourself:

I never had a partner, and I ended up feeling too alone. I had a marvelous studio and design team who were close to me, but it started becoming a bureaucracy and gradually became more corporate, until it was no longer even linked to fashion.   

You need to have the right people around you: people who adore the luxury domain. There has to be a vision, but there also has to be a partner, a duo, someone to help you carry it

It was really that lack of culture which bothered me in the end. The strongest pieces that we made for the catwalk got ignored by the business people. They forgot that in order to get to that easily sellable biker jacket, it had to go via a technically mastered piece that had been shown on the catwalk. I started to become unhappy when I realized that there was no esteem, interest, or recognition for the research that I'd done; they only cared about what the merchandisable result would look like.

. . . I heard people saying, ‘Your style is so Balenciaga now, it’s no longer Nicolas Ghesquière, it’s Balenciaga’s style.’ It all became so dehumanised. Everything became an asset for the brand, trying to make it ever more corporate – it was all about branding. I don’t have anything against that; actually, the thing that I’m most proud of is that Balenciaga has become a big financial entity and will continue to exist. But I began to feel as though I was being sucked dry, like they wanted to steal my identity while trying to homogenize things. It just wasn’t fulfilling anymore.

Read More
Telegraph UK: Balenciaga to sue ex-creative director Nicolas Ghesquiere
Vogue UK: Balenciaga Sues Nicolas Ghesquiere
Business of Fashion: BoF Exclusive | Nicolas Ghesquière Finally Speaks On Why He Left Balenciaga