INSPIRED BY BALENCIAGA:
INSIDE SAINT MARTINS’ BA SHOW
EACH YEAR, THE WOMENSWEAR PATHWAY AT CENTRAL SAINT MARTINS PARTNERS WITH THE CRISTÓBAL BALENCIAGA MUSEUM IN THE NAMELY, BALENCIAGA PROJECT. BETH DARROCH SAT FRONT ROW AND WATCHED IT UNFOLD AND TELLS US MORE ABOUT DESIGNER IMOGEN GREGORY'S STELLAR COLLECTION.
Written by Beth Darroch
Edited by Gabriel Mealor-Pritchard
Balenciaga is not an easy reference to inherit, but at Central Saint Martins, the students of BA Fashion Design Womenswear didn't really try to. Instead, they got on a plane to Spain, spent time with nine pieces inside the Cristóbal Balenciaga Museum, and came back with something to say.
The brief asked them to look at how Balenciaga absorbed popular costume into his practice, how he abstracted and elevated it, and what that process of adaptation might look like when placed in the hands of a generation navigating a very different set of pressures.
Each pathway documented its research and creative development before designing a complete outfit, assessed by both Central Saint Martins and the Cristóbal Balenciaga Museum, with the emphasis falling on technique and interpretation rather than straight-up homage. The question was never really whether students could replicate Balenciaga's silhouettes, but whether they could understand what drove them.
Forty-seven looks were presented at the LVMH Theatre, and among the designers was Imogen Gregory, whose two pieces shifted the conversation to somewhere more real.
“My project draws on the Spanish folktale La gallina de los huevos de oro, The Hen That Laid the Golden Eggs,” she explains. “In the story, the farmer keeps pushing the hen to produce more golden eggs until he destroys the very thing that was sustaining him.”
In Gregory’s interpretation, the hen represents the British public, while the farmer stands in for government policy, economic systems and rising living costs. The metaphor reflects a population being forced to produce more through longer hours, multiple jobs and constant Financial compromise.
Material choice becomes central to that argument. “I took some bamboo and indigo dyed it, and the material is cheesecloth treated by airbrush laced with coffee,” she says. “The main idea was trying to take tailoring in a contemporary lens and use resources around us, to show that people can’t afford tailored garments anymore because of the pressures of the government.”
Where Balenciaga worked with the refinement of couture fabrics, Gregory uses bamboo, cheesecloth and coffee. Tailoring, usually tied to ideas of status and security, is handled more resourcefully here. The lace is stained rather than pristine, the finish less polished, but the structure is still there. It feels shaped by the realities of the moment, not removed from them.
And yet, Gregory does not frame the metaphor as entirely hopeless. Reflecting on time spent in Balenciaga’s hometown, she describes people sitting in winding streets drinking wine despite economic pressure. Even if the eggs are a source of stress and hardship, she says, they are still golden.“There is still value in each one”, she states.
Across the show, that balance between reverence and resistance was clear. Balenciaga’s influence could be seen in the rigour of cut and attention to construction, but it was filtered through contemporary experience. At Central Saint Martins, heritage is preserved and tested against the realities students are living through now.