Kardashian’s dress, which she wore to the company’s fall 2022 runway presentation in Paris, was constructed entirely of duct tape.
Kim Kardashian has worn some of Demna Gvasalia’s most daring and uncompromising designs since she initially started serving as the designer’s de facto muse at Balenciaga early last year.
Of course, there was the all-black bodysuit with a train she wore to the 2021 Met Gala—with her face completely covered, it was interpreted as a wink to her undeniable celebrity—or the hot pink catsuits, one of which featured a huge ruffled cloak, that she wore for her Saturday Night Live debut back in October.
Kardashian has grown so closely associated with Balenciaga over the last year that when the brand unveiled their summer 2022 campaign last month featuring Isabelle Huppert, she was named the official face of the company.
The fact that Kardashian attended the Balenciaga show today as part of Paris Fashion Week, which was held at the Le Bourget exhibition centre on the north-eastern outskirts of the city, came as no surprise, but her choice of clothing was a little less expected: an athletic top and leggings covered entirely in Balenciaga branded packing tape that had been wrapped around her by hand, as well as a matching version of the brand’s iconic Hourglass handbag that had also been hand.
(Vanessa Friedman, the top fashion critic for The New York Times, who saw the event with Kardashian, remarked that the dress created a “sticky tape-like sound” as she walked and that she voiced worry that it may break when she sat down. Thankfully, such worries turned out to be unfounded.)
One of Gvasalia’s most spectacular fashion presentations ever had a suitably dramatic start thanks to it.
The runway had a post-apocalyptic feel to it, staged in the round with a huge backdrop constructed to simulate an Arctic tundra, machinery pumping out snow, wind, and fog—at one point, there were even bursts of fake thunder and lightning.
Models strutted down the runway as long skirts billowed behind them to the backdrop of booming industrial music.
If you could take your eyes off Kardashian‘s outrageous front-row outfit for a second, that is. It was the type of epic spectacle that only Gvasalia could produce.