The fashion industry is known for its unmerciful pace and its future-forward dogma.  Each season, designers bare all to produce an onslaught of new merchandise, setting out to add fresh perspective and an innovative edge to the looming fashion horizon.  For practically every designer, however, the future holds a bit of irony -- looking forward, after all, is largely dependent on looking back.  The past is the ultimate source of reference, as fashion is indeed cyclical.  

Designer garments are not imagined in a vacuum -- they are the culmination of past, present, and future consciousness.  Each season, the overwhelming lot of items that march down the runway are, more often than not, classic designs with a post-modern twist.  Ultimately, the finished product is one of evolution and reinvention, not completely separate from the past, or the future for that matter.

The Spring 2012 Balenciaga Ready-To-Wear Collection is a perfect example of history ‘rinsed-and-repeated’.  Nicolas Ghesquière, Creative Director currently at the helm of the prized Balenciaga house, maintained a certain "space between the body and the fabric".  It's a clear homage and reverence to the heritage of the house circa 1960s, when the label's founder Cristobal Balenciaga invented a voluminous look that was deceptively weightless.  

Beyond that, Ghesquière also reintroduced and modernized one of the most iconic Balenciaga pieces from 1967: an elongated hat with an austere, downward-sloping rear brim. “It was inspired by a wedding headpiece,” Ghesquière told VOGUE magazine.

As the season’s top publishers feature the latest trends this month, the exaggerated hat is certainly a welcomed and graphical reminder that the 1960s was a truly revolutionary period for fashion and culture; and that influence is certainly finding a very large presence in this season’s luxury-wear.  “The history of the house is incredible,” explains Ghesquière. “I can work on something and then look back through the archives...I am very respectful of [Cristobal] Balenciaga.”

Spring 2012 is a season for extravagance, imagination, and transcendence. Add some of Balenciaga's most innovative and iconic pieces to your wardrobe -- shop Balenciaga.com now!