Fashion Wire Daily March 1, 2005 - PARIS - After a season of strikingly predictable fashion in Milan it was a real relief on Tuesday to witness in Paris the fall/winter 2005 collection of Balenciaga, whose creative director Nicolas Ghesquiere is surely one of the few genuinely original voices in fashion.

Ghesquiere looked to the future in this collection with elements of science fiction, organic forms and French classicism. That’s a tricky trio to mix together, but Ghesquiere is such an inventive designer he made light of the unusual task he set himself.

He opened with a series of beige coats cut for a space station shopping spree and trimmed with mink or beaver, before segueing into several “Courreges” looks, all white naturally, with horizontal clasps and rolled over buttons that one sensed most of the women in the audience were just dying to wear. Not that this was a huge gathering. Balenciaga turns down hundreds of requests each season for invitations, preferring to show in a simple white space in St Germain to 120 leaders in the world of style.

The designer’s most beautifully realized combination were navy blue jackets cut by the most precise in fashion and made with mink shawl collars. Some jackets came with refined crystal belts with miniature bows, the same that appeared on the ankle straps of some great high heels.

His finale, while evocative and defiantly new, was a tad improbable. Impressionistic dresses in chiffon topped by feathers had great charm but looked destined to have more life in rock videos than on commercial stores.

The collection, while a couple of notes of last season’s brilliant naval collection, was overall an undoubted success. Much has been made of the continued losses at the house of Balenciaga, but it would surely be unwise for its owners, Gucci Group, to divest itself of this designer and house. Ghesquiere is an unquestioned leader. His complicated clothes have not been widely copied, so his is not a fashion paradigm. But one never leaves any of shows without thinking that one has witnessed something genuinely new – and how many other designers can you really say that about?

“Futuristic yes, but a future that reflects the archives of Balenciaga,” Ghesquiere told FWD, backstage before being warmly complimented by Francois Henri Pinault, president of Gucci Group. That came just seconds before Marianne Faithfull grabbed him and said, “Nicolas I loved it.”