March 27, 2023 Issue

Lauren Collins is a superb describer. Her “Pins and Needles,” in this week’s issue, is a wonderful example of her art. It’s a profile of Balenciaga’s provocative art director Demna. His wild creations give Collins plenty of material to work with. For example:

The most memorable looks were the most demotic: shrunken puffers, blasted-out jeans, a leather gown spliced from old handbags, a series of hooded sweatshirts paired with tap pants so paltry that you could almost feel the goosebumps on the models’ scraggy legs.

She wore a black double-breasted suit with her usual lank hair and wire-rimmed glasses. The sleeves ran past her fingertips, as is Demna’s wont. He had added long flaps to the trousers, which blurred the line between pant and skirt, swishing like a liturgical vestment as Douglas walked.

You could hear his ski-parka opera coats rustling through the narrow corridors. There were murmurs of appreciation for a trapezoidal satin T-shirt that Demna said took three months to make, and for a clementine-colored day suit with edges that looked like they could draw blood, shown with a slick black fruit-bowl hat.

Collins’s couture descriptions are inspired – right up there with Judith Thurman’s, maybe better. Someday I’ll run a comparison and see who is the best.